Human evolution; migration on plate tectoncis (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 14, 2023, 18:06 (646 days ago) @ David Turell

Floating along with the plates' movements. Simply moving land masses helped humans spread out:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-reveal-how-humans-first-populated-the-ancient-m...

"Between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, humans began to make their way across the megacontinent of Sahul, a landmass that connected what is now Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands.

"New research reveals more about the routes used by these early humans and the length of time it took for them to fully explore the extremities of Sahul. It could have taken up to 10,000 years for the vast area to be completely covered by these intrepid humans, which is twice as long as previously thought.

"To refine their estimates, researchers developed a new, more sophisticated model that factored in influences on travel, like the land's ability to provide food, water source distribution, and the landscape's topography.

"'The ways that people interact with terrain, ecology, and potentially other people alter our model outcomes, providing more realistic results," says ecologist Corey Bradshaw from Flinders University in Australia.

"'We now have a good prediction of the patterns and processes of how people first settled these lands tens of thousands of years ago."

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'Migration most likely began through Timor, then later through western parts of New Guinea. Rapid expansion would then have happened southward toward the Great Australian Bight and northward to New Guinea.

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'Whether it's preferring a route through two mountains rather than over them or keeping close to water sources, these details can be significant when it comes to where populations spread and how quickly.

"'This also goes to show the power of combining computational models with archaeology and anthropology for refining our understanding of humanity," says archaeologist Stefani Crabtree from Utah State University.

Comment: sailing over the seas obviously happened as in teh a cific, but following land masses makes perfect sense. See the illustrations.