Is there any evidence that people migrated from west Africa to South America some 10-20,000 years ago? As I understand it, the theory is North and South America were people from inhabitants of Siberia who crossed over during the Ice Age when land bridges were available because water was on land in the form of ice. But many of the Pacific islands were settled by people travelling thousands of miles on rafts and canoes from west to east. Any reason why it didn’t happen in the Atlantic? Wind patterns? Currents?
It’s controversial whether west Africans might have crossed to South America even within pre-Columbian times. Whether they did so >10,000 years ago is currently unknowable and the best we can say is that we have no particular reason to think they did. It depends of course on how early sea faring vessels were invented.
I can’t think of any specific reason why it couldn’t happen. As to why it didn’t happen? There’s no evidence. No disease, new tech, farming, ect suddenly appearing. No genetic diseases passed down, nothing at all which is discernible to us now. Even the Polynesian New World contact anomalies have evidence like the chickens and potatoes that shouldn’t have been there, but even then, that’s not solid evidence of human contact. It could’ve happened, but if it did the results are indistinguishable from those of it not having happened.
The Polynesians developed an impressive level of voyaging technology, which allowed them to disperse over much of the Pacific Ocean. This included the construction of sizable vessels, understanding of winds & currents, celestial navigation, and provisioning for long voyages. It was no small accomplishment, and it took a considerable time to develop.
I know of no evidence that anything like this level of long-distance open-ocean sailing technology was developed anywhere in Africa outside of Arab countries, who used it to trade down Africa’s east coast and to India, but didn’t venture into the Atlantic.
Why the difference? The obvious reason is that people who live on small islands, often in view of others, have good reason to take moving between them seriously. Whereas if you have an enormous landmass under your feet you have little reason to undertake difficult and dangerous adventures in search of another that may or may not exist.
There’s no evidence for it, but it’s entirely plausible that Ice Age hunters may have seal-hunted their way along the edge of the ice sheet. There was plenty of fresh water, and seals would have provided everything else they needed. So it was possible.
I thought the genome mapping of recent decades has made the prehistoric journeys of mankind fairly well documented.
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/
There has been an explosion of hints of non-Alaskan contacts, but I guess the consensus is still that the pre-colombian people of the Americas were essentially from Asia and a key culture in their spread is Clovis. Alleged genetic traces of Australian, African and European genes pop up here and there. Ancient burials are declared, either ethnically or culturally, this or that. So there have been contacts, just not enough to change the demographics or leave a distinct cultural mark. And distinct cultural mark is very much a disputable matter.
I think the key is: who gets there first and who forms a succesful culture that supports big populations. Fishing boats tend to get driven from Africa to within sight of Brazil. I don’t remember how often it is, but more than once a century. The key here is, there are never any women in them. Impossible to know whether the fishermen get promoted to Gods or get eaten, but they are unlikely to leave a significant mark. It is difficult to know why the Polynesians were so different. But they did pack whole families with dogs, pigs and seeds, and set out to live in distant lands. Africa did not have a similar culture. This is my first answer: most cultures don’t send fertile women to un-known destinations.
But Europe actually had the kind of culture. What happened to the vikings of Vinland? They probably sailed south. Maybe they met locals who either ate them in an elaborate ritual or, alternatively, had hot monkey sex with them on the beach. We just have to accept that small groups of people don’t necessarily leave any traces to us. So a second answer is that the eastern ocean people were there, but they were too few too late.
More importantly Polynesians, or Austronesians generally, settled empty lands. It’s very easy for a “family with dogs, pigs and seeds” to settle on an an empty island and rapidly dominate the population when there are no other people already living there. Even when the island is as large as Madagascar or New Zealand.
In contrast, we know that Austronesians did make it to Africa and New Guinea. With 99% probability they made it to South America. And it would be remarkable if they never made it to Australia. Yet they left basically no trace on those landmasses. No genetics, no technology, no crops. All we have are a few traces of chicken bone and a couple of pottery shards to show that they were ever their.
The reason for the difference in performance seems pretty obvious: competition from the locals. Even if the locals weren’t trying to eat the colonists, which they probably were, they were competing with them for resources and for mates. The colonists simply couldn’t make any headway on a populated landmass.
And the same would go for any African colonisation of the Americas. Without a deliberate, large scale colonisation attempt, it would be incredibly unlikely for any Africans that reached the Americas to leave any trace. Even if we weren’t just talking about male-occupied boats blown off course, stone age people simply don’t have the ability to successfully colonise occupied lands that far from home.
The question is what sort of boat technology the Australian settlers had over 40,000 years ago. IIRC, the biggest jump is from New Guinea to north Australia, not too far and not too hostile.
The settlement of Polynesia with much more advanced craft and navigation techniques happened mainly in a wave about 1500 years ago or less. (Maoris only beat the white man to New Zealand by about 400 years, IIRC.)
There may be the occasional strays going various directions, and it was barely feasible (read The Ra Expedition) but there is obviously no evidence of purposeful or sustained contact. OTOH, I think it was in de Camp’s The Ancient Engineers that he mentions the only evidence we have of longer distance Roman voyages in the Indian Ocean is an offhand remark in some ancient writing that “it takes X days to sail to India”. Our knowledge is far from complete and likely to remain speculation. But… the lack of significant foreign trade goods in archeaological finds (main reason for long travel) suggests little to no contact.
No, the big jump is over the Wallace Line.
It’s not all that far, but it’s well over the horizon. It’s seriously deep, and always has been, even when sea level was at its lowest.
It proves that the ancestors of Australian Aborigines had boats that could cross deep ocean at least 50 000 years ago, possibly up to 60 000 years ago.
Yet it’s a bit of a mystery why their knowledge of sailing was subsequently lost.
The issue with boats is of course not depth but distance; the minimum distance at a period of glacial maximum was apparently around 20 miles. It at least possible this was done by a small group on a marginal vessel (say, a makeshift raft), for which they had little use after making landfall.
Not really. The map in the link shows that (a) there were 2 easy connections via Java -Timor and via Borneo - Celebes (b) the distance was much shorter then and the “spread” was such that unlike polynesian exploration, it was fairly easy to hit land on the other side just by going straight out.
This is not to put down the skills of the proto-aborigines. The ability to build any type of ocean-going boat, and the willingness to go beyond one simple fishing expedition to actually moving families to new locations by boat suggests they were past the “straddle a log and paddle” stage. Building boats also suggests a fishing culture far more advanced than spearing whatever swims up near the surface - even back before the neaderthals were fully displaced in Europe. The settlement of Australia was a LONG time ago.
Read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” for a good discussion of the navigation techniques of Polynesians.
Funny you should mention Jared Diamond. I can’t easily pull up the quote, but iirc Diamond has theorized/speculated that Australia’s highly variable climate (making planting crops less reliably rewarding) and relatively poverty in some kinds of resources caused its settlers to lose some skills and technologies over time as they struggled to get by.
Right. No one can discount a occasional lost fishing boat washing up. But these sorts of thing seems to be no significant long term effect. For example, we now KNOW the Vikings made it to America, in some numbers, had a modest settlement, etc. But other than one site, a few scattered and debated artifacts and several highly debated runestones, there’s nothing. There’s almost zilch evidence among the native populations. The Vikings had no significant impact that we can see.
So, maybe some African vessel made it over to South America- why would we expect they would have any significant impact?
That sounds about right.
… for they tell no lies.
Beyond the fact that they reached Australia, I’m not sure there’s any evidence that they did build boats that can truly be called ocean-going.
As my previous post here was meant to show, they crossed the Lombok Strait.
It’s not all that wide, but it’s deep and serious currents flow through it.
People here seem to completely missing the fact that it’s very difficult to cross because the currents are very strong. It requires real sailing skills. You can’t just paddle across on a raft because it would be swept into the Indian Ocean by the prevailing current.
Perhaps there was once an easier passage. Is it possible that changes in the currents made traversing the strait impractical at some point?