On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners

We are always learning and altering our boundaries.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected. Greek island of Crete Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Archaeologists can only speculate about who the toolmakers were. One hundred and thirty thousand years ago, modern humans shared the world with other hominids, like Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis. The Acheulean culture is thought to have started with Homo erectus.