Category Archives: Ancient Humans

The oldest City in Europe: Lepenski Vir, Serbia

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Ancient Humans, art, History, religion

 

We had one more stop on this very interesting excursion in Serbia.  That was Lepenski Vir Serbia.

 

We visited one of the most important archaeological sites in Serbia and Europe called Lepenski Vir. It is the oldest planned settlement in Europe, located on the banks of the Danube in the Iron Gate gorge which we passed on our way there. This was the first site that was permanently inhabited in Europe.

 

The word “vir” means “whirlpool.” That refers to a nearby whirlpool so big that it could drag a big boat into it. This of course was very important for the people of the time who got most of their food fishing.

 

 

The Mesolithic Period, or Middle Stone Age, is an archaeological term describing specific cultures that fall between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic Periods. While the start and end dates of the Mesolithic Period are not the same in each region, it is generally accepted that it is dated approximately from 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. [12,000 to 10,000 years ago]. That is pretty darn old.

 

The earlier Paleolithic was an age when humans obtained food only by hunting and gathering, but toward the Mesolithic period, they developed agriculture which contributed to the rise of permanent settlements like this one. This happened in different places around the world at about the same time. The later Neolithic period is distinguished by the domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture was becoming to the norm. Humans started to domestic dogs in the Mesolithic period.  During the Mesolithic period, humans developed cave paintings, engravings, and ceramics to reflect their daily lives. Some Mesolithic people still continued with intensive hunting, but others practiced the initial stages of domestication.

Some Mesolithic settlements were villages of huts, others walled cities. This site contained a sprinkling of huts.

Dragoslav Srejović was the first archaeologist to explore the site. The researchers noticed that the site was an example of an outstanding level of preservation and quality of artifacts.  Because the settlement here was permanent and planned architect Hristivoje Pavlović called it “the first city in Europe.”

 

When Srejović and his team started digging they had no idea how deep they should dig.  Each step down represented 1,000 years of human history. The deeper they dug the more they found. The stone figurines were clearly of human origin and clearly indicated human culture, but at first they had no idea how old. The Lepenski Vir site consists of one large settlement with about ten satellite villages.

 

Cultures are also distinguished by the tools used by the people. Tools used in the Mesolithic period were usually composite devices that they made with small chipped tools.

The very important site of Lepenski Vir was unearthed in the 1960s. This site is usually considered the most important Mesolithic site in south-east Europe.

 

 

There were clear signs of culture discovered at Lepenski Vir. Numerous piscine (fish) sculptures with human-like faces with eyes that looked like fish eyes.  Perhaps they were associating themselves with their gods.  As Northrop Frye, the brilliant Canadian literary critic pointed out, the main purpose of art and religion is to give the world a human shape.

 

Numerous fish sculptures have been found in the area, which is understandable since fish were clearly their main source of food. Even the sculptures they created showed creature with fish like eyes. Some have speculated that these may have been considered as gods. Was the first religion created here?  Perhaps they worshipped something like Mother Earth like the indigenous peoples of North America. Is this some confirmation for my theory that all religions are really the same religion in different forms?

 

What we saw here was the remains of the huts. This period saw the development of unique trapezoidal buildings and monumental sandstone sculptures. You can see the shapes in the photographs. These included huts for human families. These are now all housed inside a structure with massive window to make it feel like nature.

 

One of the interesting features of the structures was their trapezoidal shape that mimicked the rock face across the bay pictured here. Clearly the mirroring shape is not accidental but rather, giving the world a human shape.

It was also noted that the huts (homes) were all facing the river and a large rock outcropping across the water on the other side? The huts trapezoidal shape mimics the shape of the rock face on the other side of an inlet.  Perhaps the people also considered the river a life force. Or even that massive rock an example of the life force? And don’t say rocks are dead. To indigenous people around the world, rocks are considered alive.

 

It was suspected in 1966 and confirmed in 1967 that this was a site of exceptional value. It had unique architectural remains and stone sculptures that were particularly important. The researchers concluded during this time that this was an eponymous site a previously unknown Mesolithic people in the region of the Iron Gates Gorge.  The original assumption had been that this was a Neolithic settlement. At first they had discovered pottery that indicated a Neolithic settlement, but later came to realize that lower down there were the remains of a much older settlement that had been concealed by the materials above it.

 

There is another interesting aspect to this site. The site is a kind of natural arboretum that contains a number of woody species that amount to what has been called an outdoor school for learning about trees. The presence of species from the genus Pines (Pinus), Fir (Abies), Juniper (Juniperus), and Borage (Tsuga)  was also discovered here. As a result, based on what they called the first degree of protection under the Law of Nature protection, it is one of the most it is considered one of the most important nature reserves in Serbia.

 

Lepenski Vir is the only site in Europe where the study of the history of nature and human society are closely connected. It is considered an area of exceptional ecological value.

 

 

Burial methods are also interesting. They started burying bodies in the fetal position, as if returning to the womb of the mother. This would have a very interesting religious connotation.   Important people were buried underneath the homes.

 

There is also evidence that the people who lived here were healthier than other Europeans. They had healthy teeth and dined on meat and fish. Of all the skeletons only 2 teeth were missing. Dentists would not have got rich there. 300 skeletons were found here and more than half, 180, had no evidence of violent deaths. The average life span in Europe at the time was 35 years and here some were found estimated to have died at age 50 or even, in one case, 80 years old. There was no evidence of violent deaths either. Maybe they were a lot smarter than us. It seems they lived in peace for a couple of thousand years.  What could be more impressive than that?

 

The people were also very tall. Elsewhere in Europe at the time the average height was 1.49 metres and here 1.64 metres. Sedentary life must have been good! 4,500 years ago people migrated away from this area. The reason is not clear yet.

 

One tricky thing the archaeologists had to deal with was the fact that a hydro-electric damn was being established on the Danube River, which of course meant that the river would become a reservoir for the project and the water level would rise significantly, thus drowning the found site. As a result, it was necessary to move all everything from the original site to a new one higher up. And by the time they got to this point there was little time. They had to hurry, even though archaeologists, like lawyers, hate to rush. The new site was 29.5 metres higher than the original site. The relocation was completed in 1971. The final conservation work was completed in 2011.

This is the remains of fireplace inside the hut.

During the excavations 121 grave sites were found, which had to be respected and examined for scientific information.

 

There are also signs of human occupation dating back to the Copper Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age as well as Roman and Medieval periods. Some of those trapezoidal structures date back 8,000 years which some have said is one of the most interesting periods of human history. It was a time of substantial economic, cultural, sociological, and spiritual changes caused by contact with different populations. It is also the time during which humans changed from hunter-gatherers to stock-breeding and agricultural communities in Europe. In this Danube Gorges area, the transformations are characterized by some of the most original known cultural expressions ever accomplished in human history. And most of those were discovered right here in Lepenski Vir.

 

The more I thought about what we had all learned today the more in awe I was.  That modern humans had figured all this out  based on skimpy remains is truly astounding. As a species we have created a lot of harm, but we sure have learned a lot too.

What is the greatest Culture of all Time?

Ancient Humans, civilization, Indigenous People before Contact

What is the greatest human culture ever created? Most westerners would likely say European civilization. What would you say?

Wade Davis, Canada’s preeminent anthropologist believes that the greatest contribution to  culture  was produced in Polynesia.   I was shocked when I heard that. Davis has studied many societies. I had never thought of Polynesia with that much respect. I was wrong. I am not saying Davis was right. It really doesn’t matter; they all have great achievements. What does matter is that we respect them all.

To my surprise Davis, in a talk on CBC Radio, called Polynesia “the greatest culture sphere ever to be brought into being by the human imagination.” When he talked about the ethnospherehe described it this way in his glorious book, The Wayfarers:

“Together the myriad of cultures makes up an intellectual and spiritual web of life that envelopes the planet and is every bit as important to the well being of the planet as the biological web of life that we know as the biosphere. You might think of this social web of life as an ethnosphere.”

I learned a lot from Davis’s radio talks as well as from his book The Wayfarers.    Polynesia, he said,  consists of “tens of thousands of islands flung like jewels upon the southern sea.” Davis learned a lot from the Polynesian voyaging society that set out on a voyage on the vast Pacific Ocean in a sacred canoe known as a hokule’a.   This vessel has been used to circumnavigate the world. This was a catamaran modeled on the drawings of Joseph Banks who had drawn sketches of these canoes based on his voyages with Cook in the 18th  century.  Even today these Polynesians sailors can name 350 stars in the southern sky.

As Davis said, “They can sense the presence of distant atoll islands beyond the visible horizon simply by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of the canoe knowing full well that every island group in the Pacific has its own unique refractive pattern that can be read with the same perspicacity with which a forensic scientist would read a finger print. These are sailors who in the hull in the darkness can sense 5 different sea swells moving through the canoe at any one point in time, distinguishing those caused by local weather disturbances and from the deep currents that pulsate across the ocean and can be followed with the same ease with which a terrestrial explorer would follow a river to the sea. Indeed if you took all of the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to an understanding of the ocean what you would get is Polynesia.”

What right to we have to feel superior to such a culture?  As Davis said,

“The most astonishing thing about this tradition is that it is based on dead reckoning. And dead reckoning means that you only know where you are by remembering precisely how you got there. And what this implied was that in a tradition that lacked the written word every shift of the wind, every change of course, every sign of the star, the sun, the moon, and the ocean itself embraced over the course of a multi-week voyage had to be remembered and calibrated in the mind of the wayfinder.”

The practitioners of this art based their advice on where they had come from, not from where they were going. Societies that did not have this skill resorted to hugging the shores of continents, until the British solved the problem of longitude with the invention of the chronometer in the 18th century.

Yet 10 centuries before Christ an ancient civilization called Lapita on the shores of Caledonia and New Guinea, the ancestors of the Polynesians set sail into the rising son. In a thousand years they reached Tonga and Samoa and Fiji but then mysteriously stopped for 10 centuries before resuming their quest.  They travelled a further 4,000 km. across the Pacific Ocean until they reached the Marquesas. Eventually they discovered many of the islands in the South Pacific.

During this time they lost their written word, but the Wayfinder who could be a man or a woman, and who sat Monk-like at the stern of the vessel for a journey of several weeks had to remember every shift of the wind, every sign of the moon, every sign of the stars, every sign of the sun, plus a plethora of other indicators of location and weather. If the knowledge of the chronology was broken the journey could easily end in disaster.

According to the Polynesian myths the vessel does not move. Rather the imagination of the Wayfinder pulls the island out of the sea towards the vessel. To reach Rap Nui the vessel had to travel 9,000 km. (6,000 mi.) across the doldrums, tacking in the wind for about 3500 km. to reach an island less than 25 km. across. This was less than 1º on the compass but of course they had no compass. But they sure had traditional skills and knowledge, knowledge that westerners did not appreciate.

These techniques were used to colonize the greatest thing on the planet—the Pacific Ocean. As Davis pointed out, “Five centuries before Columbus, the Polynesians had over the course of only 80 generations settled virtually every island group in the Pacific , establishing a single sphere of cultural life encompassing some 25 million square kilometers of the earth’s surface.” That is surely one of the greatest achievements of Homo sapiens, 500 years before Columbus “discovered” the western hemisphere! And they did this all without a compass or any physical instruments of navigation. Of course this amazing achievement was never recognized by the Europeans who assumed no one was better than them at navigation.

Davis asked a profound question:

“How can you not be bedazzled by the achievements of humanity when you discover what actually lies beneath the veneer of culture throughout the world. You know, Polynesian navigators who can sense the presence of distant atolls of islands beyond the horizon simply by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of a vessel. Whenever I go somewhere I try to think of a phrase that kind of distils everything and when I did work with the hokule’a and the Polynesian voyaging society the phrase that came to mind was that if you took all of the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to the understanding of the ocean what you would get is Polynesia.”

The real point of all this is not to brag about one society. The real point to avoid unnecessary  feelings of superiority. There is nothing more ignorant than feelings of superiority. There is nothing more wise than humility.

I

Wayfarers of the South Pacific

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

European explorers invariably believed they were superior to every group they encountered. This is well known. Some of the examples of the ignorance of feelings of superiority include European encounters with the Wayfarers of the South Pacific.

The first European to see the Pacific Ocean was the 16th century Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa who had crossed the isthmus of Panama in 1513.

When the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made his epic journey round the horn at the southern tip of South America he missed some important things.  The voyage was indeed impressive, but it was also impressive in the things that ideological blinkers prevented the explorers from noticing or seriously considering.

When Magellan turned around the corner of the Horn and began to head north he feared he was entering a void. That was how ignorant Europeans were about what could be found in the South Pacific. By that time half his men were already dead from the hazards of the voyage. He sailed for another 4 months in the southern Pacific and astonishingly he managed to miss every populated island group in the Pacific. Finally, on April 7, 1521 he landed on the island of Cebu.  Now we call the island group the Philippines.

Magellan was a brave explorer. It took guts to venture forth into the Pacific, because it was an ocean of the unknown in 1521. Yet he plunged on bravely. He named it “Pacific” because when he saw it the ocean was very calm. Nonetheless, although we acknowledge the bravery we also notice the blindness. As Wade Davis said, in his magnificent book, The Wayfarers,  “In his desperation and blindness he had by circumstance bypassed an entire civilization that might have taught him a great deal about the open water.”

There was an entire civilization that could have taught him how to survive and thrive in the Pacific. Yet, as so often happened with the European explorers, he failed to take advantage of what could be learned from indigenous people. That is exactly what Davis’ book is about. That is what has inspired me to consider what could be learned from indigenous people. Like my friends who suggested we could go to  an Indian Reserve in Canada and build a house for people there and solve their problems for them. If only they would listen to us. Over and over again, Europeans, thinking they were the finest and best at everything neglected to learn from indigenous people and that failure has made all the difference. Europeans were not stupid. The achievements of European explorers were remarkable, but sometimes they also possessed remarkable arrogance that did not help their cause.

The South Pacific was an astounding place. Davis said that it was “the largest sphere ever brought into being by the human imagination. Polynesia: 25 million square kilometres, nearly a fifth of the surface of the planet, tens of thousands of islands flung like jewels upon the southern sea.” Davis described the “discovery” of Polynesia by the Europeans as encountering “a new planet.” It really was that strange.

We have to remember how vast the Pacific was. It is the largest thing on the planet. It dwarfed everything—absolutely everything—the Europeans had ever seen.

The first sustained contact between Polynesia and the Spanish occurred later in 1595, some 74 years later. This was when Alvaro de Mendaña de Neira reached the islands he called the Marquesas after his patron. This was the most isolated island group in the world. There were probably as many as 300,000 people living there at the time. Davis was right: “It was an extraordinary meeting of civilizations.” It was one of the most extraordinary such encounters of all times. It was every bit as amazing as the meeting between Europeans and North Americans.

The Marquesans considered their islands to be the end of the earth, much like the Europeans had believed about their own continent before Columbus sailed to the “New World.”  That is what it was to the Europeans when Columbus sailed. This was another New World. It was nothing less than that. The Marquesans considered it the last stop on a mythical journey made by their ancestors from the west.  They believed that every human being was a descendant from Tiki, the first human. Sounds a lot like Adam doesn’t it?

The Marquesans were not in awe of the Spaniards. Far from it.  They felt they were vastly superior to these ruffians from the east.  Davis described their attitudes to this historic encounter this way,

“Thus, to the Marquesans, the Spaniards were as demons, embodiments of depravity born beyond the reaches of the eastern sky. Carnal and deceitful, cruel beyond reason, the Spaniards offered nothing. They had no skills, no food or women, no knowledge of even the most elemental elements of the natural world. Their wealth lay only in what they possessed, curious metal objects that were not without interest. But they had no understanding that true wealth was found in prestige, and that status could only be conferred upon one capable of acquiring social debts and distributing surplus food to those in need, thus guaranteeing freedom from want. The white Atua—these strangers who came from beyond all shores—had no place in the order of life.  Such was their barbaric state that sorcery did not affect them, or even the power of the priests. So complete was their ignorance that they did not distinguish commoners from chiefs, even as they treated both with murderous disdain.”

The people of the South Seas of Polynesia believed that the people with real prestige were those who helped others. Those were people who should be honoured. Yet the Europeans were puzzled by the ignorance and barbarity of the Marquesans. They wondered how such ignorant people could have accomplished so much. These were two solitudes staring each other down. A little less superiority on both sides would have been a boon to both. Arrogance is seldom a helpful attitude.

There were serious things for the Spaniards to puzzle over. They wondered how had these people come to these islands that were more than 3 months sailing distant from the most western Spanish outpost.  They noticed that women were not allowed in canoes. That was taboo.  So the women swam towards the Spanish vessels. The Spanish also noticed that the Marquesans had no magnetic compass like the Spaniards did. As a result it seemed impossible that these people could have peopled these distant islands. It was a serious puzzle.

Remember at the time European sailors had not yet solved the problem of how to measure longitude. That meant that they had to hug shores when they explored. This was a serious deficiency. That was why the English government offered a reward of 20,000 pounds to the person who solved this puzzle. At a time when a mansion in London could be furnished for about 100 pounds, this reward was magnificent. Until the invention of the chronometer European navigators had to rely on dead reckoning. As a result sailing too far from land was extremely dangerous. Yet here in the Pacific Ocean, much more vast than the Atlantic Ocean the Europeans were more accustomed with dealing, the Spaniards found these strange people. How had they got here? How had they colonized these islands? How did they get their women there so they could bear children for their men?  These were deep mysteries to the Europeans.

Captain James Cook was to some the greatest navigator in the history of England’s Royal Navy the greatest Navy in the world. At least so the English thought. Cook was the first person to pay serious attention to this puzzle. When he arrived in Hawaii his ship was met by a flotilla of 3,000 natives. Cook had noticed at Tonga that local catamarans could travel 3 leagues in the time that his ship could only cover 2 leagues. He was also surprised that people from the Marquesas could understand the language of the Tahitians even though nearly 1,600 km of the Pacific Ocean separated the two.  How was this possible?

On Cook’s very first voyage in 1769 he met in Tahiti a navigator and priest who went by the name Tupaia who drew from memory a fairly accurate map of every major island group in Polynesia except for Hawaii and Aotearoa. He placed more than 120 stones in the sand each representing an island. The map spanned 4,000 km.  That is about the distance across North America . Who in Europe could draw such a map? Could these people not teach some things of value to Cook? The answer was obvious. But not to Cook.

Later Tupaia astonished Cook even more than that. As Davis described a future trip the two took together,

“Tupaia later sailed with Cook from Tahiti to New Zealand, a circuitous journey of nearly 13,000 kilometres that ranged between 48 degrees south latitude and 4 degrees north.  To his astonishment, Cook reported, the Polynesian navigator was able to indicate, at every moment of the voyage the precise direction back to Tahiti, though he had neither benefit of sextant nor knowledge of charts.”

Imagine what would have happened if both sides had more respect for the other. How much could they have learned?

Voyage to the Americas

Ancient Humans, Indigenous People before Contact

Ancient Human travellers were not satisfied when they ventured as far into the Pacific Ocean that they discovered Easter Island. From Easter Island there is no land between it and South America. As Niobe Thompson said in his television series the Human Odyssey, “the island is so remote its settlement was almost a boast, an extravagant statement of ocean mastery.” Easter Island is about the most isolated speck of land on the planet, yet these ancient mariners found it and settled it. How amazing is that?

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues called moai. It is now a World Heritage Site. Polynesian people settled it between 700 and 1100 CE and created a thriving society. However humans brought with them passengers—rats. Together with their ever-growing population and destruction of forests for the creation of the statues led to gradual deforestation and extinction of much of their natural resources.  In time this severely weakened their society. At one time 15,000 people lived there, but when Europeans found them there their numbers had declined to 2 or 3 thousand people. After contact, European diseases and Peruvian slave trading further reduced their numbers. In 1877 their numbers had been reduced to 111 residents.

The nearest land is Pitcairn Island some 2,075 km. away. South America (Chile) is 3,512 km. away. Jared Diamond mentioned how when he arrived by jet it took 5 hours to cross the Pacific to get there and he saw no land at all in the wide ocean beneath the aircraft.

After settling the most remote island in the world, these ancient explorers transformed the landscape into an astonishing one, filled with the most surprising images of their ancestors. They built  enormously impressive statues each of which depicted the person that was buried beneath it. These tombstones became expressions of the power, prestige, and individuality of the deceased and his family. They became even taller in death than they were in life.

Of course, as is by now well known, these huge statues consumed huge resources on an island with severely limited resources.  Once the people consumed the resources they needed to survive on these remote islands things started to get nasty. As statues covered the landscape of the island the trees began to disappear, until they were all gone. What was the person who cut down the last tree thinking? People thought their religion demanded they build these statues for their leaders. This was certainly a case of an unfortunate interpretation of religious obligations leading people astray. Not for the first time or the last time.

After trees disappeared the capacity of the inhabitants of Easter Island lost their  capacity to embark on great voyages also disappeared with them.    After making these remarkable voyages, “on Easter Island, ocean voyaging died away.” At least this is what scientists believed until recently.

Recently an archaeologist in Chile, Jose Miguel Ramirez Aliaga from the University of Valparaiso, was not convinced by the traditional story. He did not believe ocean voyaging ended in Easter Island. He believed that they went 4,000 km farther east to Chile.  In Chile, Aliaga found something that only a Polynesian could have left behind—a chicken.  Based on convincing DNA evidence he proved that chickens came to South America long before Columbus did. When Columbus “discovered” the western hemisphere, chickens preceded him. Aliaga is convinced they came from the west. In other words from Asia!

In addition Aliaga found sweet potatoes of South American origin farther west in the South Pacific that are 1,000 years old.  These potatoes came to the South Pacific from South America long before European explorers like Cook came to the South Pacific.  As Aliaga has asked, if this not enough evidence to convince us that Polynesian explorers came all the way to South America what evidence would convince us? Yet there is more evidence.

Recently scientists have analyzed skulls from Easter Island and have found genetic members of native South Americans in their DNA. According to Thompson, “This is proof beyond doubt. Far earlier than Columbus there was an ocean voyaging culture that stretched all the way to the Americas.”

Master Navigators

Ancient Humans, Indigenous People before Contact

The thought of those stupendous ocean voyages from the east coast of the Pacific Ocean, bring up the critical question which Niobe Thompson asked, “Are those skills of the master navigators still alive today?” When settlers reached Hawaii they were 4,000 miles from the nearest land. What could be more remote than that? According to Niobe Thompson, “it may have been the most dangerous voyage of discovery Polynesians ever took. Find land or die at sea. When Europeans arrived that incredible story was almost forgotten.” It may have been the most dangerous voyage anyone ever took anywhere anytime! That is a story that should never be forgotten.  It was truly an epic voyage—perhaps like none other the world has ever seen.

By the 20th century traditional sailing was dying in the Pacific. Of course, why sail when you have found paradise? I know I would have been tempted to stay put. Things don’t get much better anywhere than they do in the South Pacific.

In 1975 Hawaiians discovered a man living on one of the most remote islands of Micronesia. He was the last of the master navigators who could sail across the Pacific without modern instruments or maps. He was “living proof that Polynesia was discovered by master navigators.” It was no accident. How did he do it? He relied on watching the location of the moon, planets, and stars at different times. They paid particular attention to the rising of the sun and moon and used this valuable information to navigate across thousands of miles of oceans without charts, books, records, or instruments. He relied on what he had memorized.

Oceanic people know that they did not discover the islands of the Pacific by accident. As anthropologist Sam Low said, “for oceanic people to set out on the Pacific like that required almost ‘super heroic’ people. It was one of the greatest migrations of humans in the history of humankind.” We have a lot to learn from people like that. That is what is important in this story.

For many people it is very natural to go to the sea.  It took a 1,000 years for humans at the end of Asia to decipher star maps and learn to sail the open ocean.  Thompson said, “Once they did, the South Pacific was theirs.” Yet, the human odyssey was far from over.  What about the second half of the planet?  What about the Americas?

The Big Pacific

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Countless islands can be found around Papua New Guinea. From these islands our ancestors perfected the art of sailing. They honed skills that were of vital importance for the human journey.

The Pacific Ocean is vast. It is the largest feature on the planet.  It is 19,800 km wide from east to west at 5º N.  This is halfway around the world or 5 times the diameter of the moon. It is also 15,500 km long from north to south and covers 1/3 of the earth.

The Pacific Ocean contains the lowest point on the planet—the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean and the deepest location on Earth. It is 11,034 meters (36,201 feet) deep, which is almost 7 miles. If you placed Mount Everest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the peak would still be 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) below sea level. The average depth of the Pacific ocean is 4,280 metres  putting the total water volume at 710,000,000 cubic kilometres.

Of course the Pacific Ocean was bigger when the Polynesians first crossed it. That is because of plate tectonics, which are causing the Pacific Ocean is to shrink at roughly 2.5 cm (0.98 in) per year on 3 sides roughly averaging 0.52 square km a year. The Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size.

The Pacific Ocean covers more than 30% of the earth’s surface. It is clearly the largest water mass on the planet with a surface area of 60 million sq. miles (155 million sq. km). The Pacific Ocean basin is larger than the landmass of all the continents combined. It has almost twice as much water as the Atlantic Ocean. It holds more than half the Earth’s open water supply. The conclusion is clear: the Pacific Ocean is BIG! It was a very big obstacle for ancient humans to cross, but somehow they did it.

As Niobe Thompson said in his television series, “its islands are like grains of sand scattered across a vast blue void.  They are impossibly remote. Yet eventually, humans reached every one. Yet how we came to settle the islands of our greatest ocean is a mystery that puzzled European sailors for centuries.” After all, they considered themselves the master sailors. How could these people have done it?

Around Papua New Guinea there are countless islands from which our ancestors—our wise ancestors—perfected the art of sailing. Those skills would prove invaluable on some amazing journeys. Journeys that astound us to this day. It is possible that we discovered those islands by accident. For a long time this is what Europeans believed. They could not comprehend the possibility that perhaps some people—well before them—had greater navigational skills than they did. This was another example of the familiar hubris.

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and his crew set themselves adrift on the Pacific Ocean on their raft Kon-tiki to establish the theory of accidental drift.  Ocean currents pushed them 7,000 miles from South America to Polynesia. He believed that natives gradually peopled the islands across the ocean island by island. On the other hand, Wulf Schiefenhövel said this is nothing but Eurocentric vision.   New research indicates a much different vision.

Geoff Irwin of New Zealand spent a lifetime trying to prove that the first explorers of the Pacific Islands were not drifting aimlessly, but were instead master sailors.

In the South Pacific, the trade winds blow from the east to the west.  Most people, like Thor Heyerdahl, thought that this was also the direction of human migration. It made sense didn’t it?  Well not completely.

Irwin believed people did not come with the prevailing winds. He believed that people set out in a direction that would most likely make it easy for them to return.  After all, who wants to set out with no chance of ever coming home? Sort of like these people who have signed up for space journeys with no hope of returning. Some people are this adventurous, but not many. Most people are too sensible to be that brave.

As a result of this analysis it actually makes more sense for people to migrate to the South Pacific Islands from the west so they can set off against the prevailing winds and come home with those winds. It is not easy to set off into prevailing winds, but sailors know how to do that. They were incredibly smart sailors.

Yet we need some hard evidence for this interesting theory. Where is that evidence?  At a wind tunnel at the University of Auckland they changed sailing in 1995 when New Zealand took the Americas Cup for the first time with a boat designed there. Even at 40º into the wind a canoe can still drive forward. Their experiments showed that upwind exploration was possible. This is still not proof, but it is evidence that it is possible for Irwin’s explanation to be right.

The next question was if people from Papua New Guinea used their boats to sail across the ocean how they did they navigate? Lisa Mattisoo-Smith used genetics to reconstruct the settlement of the South Pacific. She is Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Otago focusing on identifying the origins of Pacific peoples and their plants and animals in order to better understand the settlement, history, and prehistory of the Pacific and New Zealand.

As a result of her investigations she concluded, “the navigational skills and knowledge of course are not preservedarchaeologically, but it is indicated archeologically.” The fact that their exploration was almost instant is good evidence that they possessed the skills and had an exploration strategy. There was almost instantaneous dispersal from Papua New Guinea. Not only that, but they were continually successful at their settlements and that tells us “these people knew what they were doing. These people were prepared. They knew where they were going, and they knew what they needed to survive when they got there.” In other words, their explorations were far from accidental. They knew exactly what they were up to.

These ancient travellers crossed the islands near Oceania to remote Oceania about 3,000 years ago.  That was about 2,500 years before Columbus “discovered” North America or about 1,500 years before Vikings came here. We have to remember how far the Polynesians  traveled over the vast Pacific Ocean. These were astonishing voyages all made without western navigational instruments and with just tiny islands in the vast Pacific to be discovered.  As a result the Eurocentric view has been exploded. Within 300 years they did it.

Lisa Mattisoo-Smith makes it clear: “the whole settlement of the Pacific is under-celebrated and under-valued in terms of representing the capabilities of people thousands of years ago. They did amazing things.” These ancient people demonstrated clearly that ancient people were wise. We have to respect that wisdom.

As Schiefenhövel said, “Homo sapiens is a crazy animal. They do things which you don’t believe are possible and the migration into the Pacific is one of those things.” They traveled against strong prevailing winds, yet that is exactly what they did. It seemed impossible, yet they did it.

Incredible Sea Voyages: The Outrigger

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues

We know about some fantastic voyages—Columbus “discovering” North America, though of course, it was already filled with people when he got there. Then there was Captain Cook and his amazing “discoveries” of island in the Pacific Ocean. Again, he found people that got there before him. How did they do it?

There is evidence of more than one incredible prehistoric sea voyage that suggest our ancient ancestors did not travel and discover new continents by accident. Even though humans evolved with feet on the ground they made truly amazing sea voyages that are difficult for us to comprehend.  They did not stay in Africa forever. How did this happen?  When did some humans become water people? How did we learn to live on oceans? Episode 3 of the series The Great Human Odyssey tried to answer these questions.

When early humans crossed Asia from Africa, South East Asia should have been the end of the line. The vast Pacific Ocean really should have stopped our ancestors. But our ancestors were not easily stopped. To any rational human being the enormous Pacific Ocean would have seemed an impassable barrier to any further colonization of our planet.  Really the Pacific Ocean was the largest barrier on the planet.

However as Niobe Thompson said, “instead it was nota  barrier, it was an opportunity, a life giving gift…our ancestors found ways to live with the sea and soon they found ways of crossing it.”

Wulf Schiefenhövel from the Max Planck Institute also made an interesting comment: “Our sea water had been frozen to such an extent that the sea was about 120 metres lower than it is now. That means people could walk from Sumatra to East Java and then there were channels of water around 30-40 km. wide.”

The first sea voyages happened so long ago that we don’t have much evidence of how they did it. We can only speculate. It is very difficult to understand how early humans could have made it. It seems so difficult that it seem impossible. But our human ancestors had determination.

There is no archaeological evidence of the first human boats. Yet, there is some interesting evidence in Papua New Guinea, the world’s biggest tropical island. Humans reached it at least 50,000 years ago. As Thompson said, “It is a rich culture today that opens a window on its past.”

In the wilderness of Papua New Guinea there is a ceremony that is very old and rare.  Few outsiders have ever seen it. There is an initiation ceremony where boys are transformed into men.  There is a ritual that mimics the snaky movement of the crocodile the most dangerous creature in the area. There is a secret space of the warrior society—i.e. the “spirit house.” Here families say good-bye to their children some 15 years old. To survive a boy must become a man by learning the secrets of the river. The boy must become part human and part crocodile.   Boys are cut in an extremely painful ritual. The object of the ritual is become “water people.” The crocodile people give a hint of what life was like on the water. The earliest kind of god is still used—i.e. a dugout canoe!

Over time, the people of Papua New Guinea tool dugout canoes to amazing extremes. Their war canoes are very long and fast. As Schiefenhövel said, “as every sailor knows, the longer your boat the faster your travel.” I didn’t know that. The people of Papua New Guinea, as far as we know, never had sailing boats because they never ventured into the sea.

The ingenious invention that allowed them to cross the waves of the ocean was the outrigger. This made the boat very stable on the ocean. These vessels  are very simple often made of hollowed out mangrove.  “The outrigger triggered a revolutionary new phase in our human journey—harvesting the winds of the sea.” This was the start of some astounding voyages.

Ancient food: Better than MacDonalds

Ancient Humans

In that  television series I watched on PBS, Niobe Thompson was interested in the important questions like what triggered the development of the modern human mind? Part of the answer is that this development was assisted by the accident that humans found shelter in caves beside the ocean in southern Africa, not far from where I visited in 2013.  Humans probably took advantage of the rich marine food sources  there that were rich in poly-unsaturated fatty acids that are so valuable for the development of large modern brains. This would have given the evolution of humans a major boost. The humans likely noticed that all the shell food lying around was very good to eat and provided vital nutrients. Some say that because human brains got larger they noticed the shells.  Thompson said it was more likely that because they took advantage of the food in shellfish humans developed larger brains. The regular consumption of shellfish provided nutrients for brains to become better. In either case, I wish their descendants used those big brains  more often.

It is likely that humans found they could harvest more than shellfish that were lying around on beaches. It is very probable that humans learned how to harvest the wealth beneath the waves of the oceans.  For example, abalone, an extremely nutritious food source, would only be available to those humans who could dive to the bottom of the

The sea is treacherous and cold. Even in southern Africa it would not be easy to harvest food from the sea. Yet humans have proved remarkably resourceful at attending to that marvelous food source in the oceans.  Though the ocean was treacherous the risks were abundantly worth it. It likely enabled our early ancestors to escape extinction when the land suffered through interminable droughts. The ocean allowed our ancestors to obtain all the food they needed. The ocean contains a vast storehouse of food that can be harvested when conditions on land are as difficult as they were when our ancestors became the first modern humans and allowed them to escape the disasters that befell all of their kin species.

Thompson also went to the Badjoa of Tawi Tawi in the southern Philippines. These people are incredible divers. They can hold their breath for more than 5 minutes in search of food deep under the ocean surface. The Badjoa live in a war zone yet have mastered the art of hunting and gathering on the ocean floor.

Some of the Badjoa divers are able to dive up to 100 metres deep in search of food. That is so deep that divers who reach such depths are able to walk on the floor. Their bodies don’t float up. Humans are the only terrestrial animal that can get that deep to hunt for food.  The Badjoa have diving and swimming skills that can only be compared with seals. That’s how good they are at this.

These Badjoa have for centuries passed on the diving and hunting and gathering skills to succeeding generations. There are very few groups of humans that still have these skills. The Badjoa clearly show that humans might have harvested enough food to escape extinction by mining the rich storehouse of food in the ocean. Our early ancestors may have been driven by serious environmental and climatic challenges to develop skills that enabled them to survive and thrive on food from the sea.

As Thompson said, “We are children of a changing planet forged in Africa, but also driven to the brink of extinction. Only a handful of survivors knew how to outsmart the shifting climate.” Our amazing ancestors threatened by disasters, challenged by extreme environmental hazards migrated over many generations from Africa to every part of the globe. We are only now beginning to understand what remarkable ingenuity, co-operation, and relentless determination was required to accomplish that while so many other species so like us failed to do that and perished from the earth.