I’ve been thinking about the possibility of large-scale population mixing theory. The main obstacle I think with this theory is how to acheive the large scale mixing this would require. This would most certainly require considerable technology since the travel distances would be so large (after 1.5 Million years ago, humanity spread throughout the world). Certainly, ocean-faring boats would be necessary for population mixing, since people settled in places like Australia. It certainly possible to construct small ocean-faring vessels with stone-age tools, as was done by the Polynesians, but these can only hold a small number of people and possessions.
Perhaps we underestimate the abilities of stone-age people simply because the evidence of their accomplishments has not survived time. A case in point is the redating of the Sphinx. While it is debatable whether the Sphinx is in fact 10,000 years old, the evidence of water erosion plus the lack of equivalent erosion on other structures considered as old as the Sphinx leads me to think it probably is 10,000 or more years old. If neolithic “civilization” was capable of constructing the Sphinx and Stonehenge, then why not sea-worthy vessels? Why not transocean merchants or even large scale immigrations to empty continents (such as the Americas and Australia) during the stone age similar to the last 500 years?
I’m not sure whether or not stone-age people had sufficient technology to do this (and this doesn’t exclude a population bottleneck) but it seems plausable to me…perhaps archaeologists should be looking for much older dig sites??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza
From the article:
In recent years professor Robert M. Schoch of Boston University, Colin Reader and other geologists have pointed out that the Sphinx displays evidence of prolonged water erosion. Egypt’s last significant rainy period ended during the 3rd millennium BC, and these geologists have posited that the amount of water erosion evident on the Sphinx indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the traditional construction date and 1500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization.
This theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists. Alternative theories for the erosion include wind and sand, acid rain, exfoliation or the poor quality of the limestone used to construct the Sphinx.
http://members.aol.com/davidpb4/sphinx1.html
From the article:
Schoch estimated the date of the Sphinx and most of the enclosure to between 5000 and 7000 BCE, far earlier than the date of 2500 assumed by archaeology. Schoch noted that weathering could have been non-linear, slowing as it got deeper because of the increasing mass of rock overhead. On this assumption, the Sphinx could have been significantly older than 7000 BCE…
To the problem of archaeological context for an earlier Sphinx, Schoch replied that urban centers had existed in the eastern Mediterranean at Catal Huyuk from the seventh millennium and at Jericho from the ninth millennium BCE.[22] At Jericho there were large stone walls and a thirty foot tower. No such settlement had been found in Egypt itself but clearly there was civilization in the region. More evidence could be under millennia of Nile river silt. [23] An advanced civilization may not have been necessary. A Neolithic culture was able to erect Stonehenge in Britain.[24]