This map shows the spread of Homo sapiens out of Africa and across the globe, with very approximate dates.

Author: Altaileopard in 2006

  • Hegar@fedia.io
    6·
    5 months ago

    Several issues here:

    50Kya is a big pulse of human expansion in Australia, but arrival is reckoned at 60-65kya. Some even claim 80k+, but that fucks with out of africa dates.

    That 30k -> 1500 line for NZ is deceptive. That expansion actually starts in southern taiwan 3-5kya, or luzon 2.5kya if you count from the lapita culture, but not from new guinea.

    15kya is the major clovis expansion in the americas but like australia initial arrival was much earlier, maybe 22-25kya.

    100kya for the middle east is not the earliest sapiens presence in the area, but it’s also not the wave that extant sapiens (us) descended from either, that’s generally reckoned at 50-70kya.

  • ptychodus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    The map is out of date for the Americas. ~22kbp footprints in NM, among other earlier dates.

    • ace_garp@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      And for Australia 50,000 is old data. The current timeline is 60-70,000 years of human habitation.

  • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
    4·
    5 months ago

    Why did it take so long for humans to get to Madagascar? Even Australia was reached much sooner, and that’s so much farther away and separated by wider oceans.

    • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      It was all dry land to Indonesia, inbetween indonesia and australia there is deep ocean, but during the ice age it was lowland all the way out through indonesia.

  • 1dalm@lemmings.worldEnglish
    51·
    5 months ago

    I think it’s such a funny quark of history that the Polynesians, despite their incredible sea exploration abilities, just apparently completely missed Australia.

      • 1dalm@lemmings.worldEnglish
        7·
        5 months ago

        I don’t know. There is linguistic, archeological and genetic evidence that the Polynesians traded with the South Americans, but I don’t think there is nearly as robust evidence for Australia.

        Current evidence as I understand it is really just as that map depicts it. That they went straight from Indonesia to New Zealand, and just missed Australia.

          • 1dalm@lemmings.worldEnglish
            3·
            5 months ago

            I personally think your third possibility is the least likely. I just find it unimaginable that there would not have been any cultural exchange at all of the two peoples knew about each other.

            I can imagine human beings, even extremely capable ones, just missing things. In fact that happened a lot. There were many European cultures that had the technical capability to sail to the Americans for thousands of years before they did it. And there were clothes in the Americas that had the capability to go the other way, but they didn’t.

            As someone else pointed out, there is a similar story for Madagascar. There were plenty of cultures that could have discovered it for centuries that just didn’t. Similar stories with countless other islands.

            Honestly, I think it’s more surprising that the indigenous Australian peoples discovered the continent when they did. They were the only animals to make the jump across the straight.

  • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nzEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    If those ‘dates’ are supposed to be ‘years ago’ in those unlabeled numbers NZ is wrong, it should be 800-1000.

    Also the Polynesian diaspora is woefully underrepresented by that tiny misshapen Pacific Ocean.