Across Atlantic Ice

by Dennis J. Stanford

  Although one could set a net by wading in the water, this would be most easily accomplished from a boat. Other than the possible illustration of a seal caught in a net at Cosquer Cave, there is no evidence of Solutreans using nets for hunting seals. There is also no direct evidence of the terrestrial hunting technologies proposed by Lawrence Straus (see chapter 8).10 Each is equally plausible.

  Ice hunting can be extremely hazardous, especially near breakup, for a sudden change of wind can drive an ice floe away from shore. If hunters found themselves in this situation without boats, they would be marooned and adrift until blown back into the ice pack or onto shore. They could survive long periods of floating in the northern currents with all-weather gear and clothing. (Solutrean people clearly knew and used winter technologies, or they could not have survived the LGM even if protected by caves.) If the ice melted out from under them, however, they would perish.

  There were more marine resources available for Solutrean people than just seals. Saltwater fish such as halibut and flounder joined salmon and trout as decorations on cave walls, no doubt speaking to their importance.11 Walruses may have been common on the ice, and many overwintering migratory waterfowl would have frequented leads and open-water ponds. The great auk was no doubt a major resource for people who lived along the beach.

  Adding seals and auks to their subsistence strategy would have been a significant step for ice age people. These animals provided not only oil and fat for fuel but also nutrients and calories critical for surviving the winter and spring months. This motivation probably accelerated the understanding of animal behavior and ice floe dynamics, leading to innovations in ice edge hunting. Simply extending winter activities onto the landfast ice would also have had big rewards.

  By summer the ice was clear of the bay and people shifted their activities to hunting terrestrial animals, fishing, and logistical tasks such as collecting stone for artifact manufacture. Summer and fall camps were likely established in the foothills for hunting ibex and other subalpine species and for spearing spawning fish. This also would have been the time of year when plant resources were harvested, some with special significance for healing various ailments. The summer and fall camps were normally abandoned in the late fall as attention once again turned toward the frozen sea. As discussed in chapter 9 the polar front shifted its position many times during the LGM, and during warming climatic episodes the winter and spring habitats of seals shifted northward along with it. It is highly likely that humans adapted to these shifts by either following the ice front’s northward retreat along the edge of the continental shelf or enhancing their maritime capabilities to follow the seals across open water.

  VOYAGERS

  Critics of the hypothesis that Solutrean people crossed the North Atlantic are more than content to point out that there is no evidence that they had watercraft or ever used marine resources beyond those gathered from local estuaries and shores. While this is not entirely true, the evidence is indeed slim—environmental processes, such as rising sea levels, have destroyed evidence of advances in marine technology—but when placed into a global perspective it forces us to reconsider the negative position. The question of when humans first used watercraft for transportation has vexed archaeologists for decades. Constructed rafts and boats have long been considered relatively recent additions to cultural inventories, but this assumption is rapidly falling away in the face of both direct and indirect worldwide evidence of the extreme antiquity of watercraft and ocean travel. Solutrean people were likely in sync with the rest of the Paleolithic world, so it is likely that they knew of and used watercraft for transportation and to exploit the LGM marine environment.

  In extreme southeast Asia, perhaps earlier than 60,000 years ago, the first mariners left terra firma for lands beyond their home shores. The events leading up to these first expeditions are virtually unknown, but the scatter of archaeological evidence on far-flung South Pacific islands leaves little doubt that they occurred.12 The world these early explorers left behind, called Sunda by prehistorians, was created when falling sea levels exposed the continental shelf, connecting the islands of Indonesia north of the Timor Sea to the continental mass of southeast Asia.

  A myriad of inter-visible islands and the human sense of adventure likely lured these first sailors away from the shores of Sunda. By 50,000 years ago voyages across the Timor Trench landed settlers on another ice age continent, known as Sahul. Sahul stretched from New Guinea southward to encompass Australia and Tasmania. So many were the successive sea voyages that by 30,000 years ago pioneers were scattered over virtually the entire expanse of Sahul and the islands of Near Oceania from New Britain to New Ireland. By 29,000 years ago the people living on Buka Island in the northern Solomons were descendants of mariners who had made extended ocean voyages of nearly 200 kilometers, more than half of which would have been out of sight of land.

  Evidence of the use of watercraft in the East China Sea appears on the eastern shore of Honshu more than 30,000 years ago. Seamen buried their kinsmen in caves on Okinawa and other islands that were separated from the mainland by as much as 150 kilometers of water. Paleolithic Honshu sailors also navigated a 50-kilometer-wide channel to Kozushima in the Izu Island chain, where they found obsidian, volcanic glass that they carried back to the mainland to make into weapon tips and knives.13

  Whether the idea of boats and the skills necessary for water travel developed in multiple independent centers or at a single center from which it spread across the world is a thought-provoking question for future research. At about the same time period when early mariners were exploring the south Pacific, evidence of water transportation appears in other widely separated regions. For example, a date of 51,000±12,000 years ago derived from calcareous breccia adhering to Homo sapiens sapiens remains suggests the possibility of an early human occupation on the island of Crete. Since Crete was not connected to the mainland at the time of the burial, anyone who came to the island would have to have made an open sea crossing.14 Intriguing too are Aurignacian artifacts found at Fontana Nuova di Ragusa, a site on Sicily, an island that was never connected to the European mainland. These discoveries provide intriguing indirect evidence that prehistoric humans used watercraft to explore the Mediterranean as far back as 38,000 years ago.

  Most illuminating for our hypothesis of a Solutrean maritime tradition are depictions of flightless great auks, deep-sea fish, and seals found on the walls of El Pendo Cave on the coast of northern Spain and Cosquer Cave on the Mediterranean coast of France. At Cosquer a diorama of three auks is dated within the Solutrean era, to between 18,000 and 19,000 years ago, by charcoal fragments found in the vicinity of the painting. Two of the birds are facing each other with outspread wings, while a third, set slightly apart, is lying down with its wings folded. Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique whose research interests are Paleolithic art and technology and the evolution of human cognitive abilities, interprets this life scene as two males fighting to mate with a female, who is inviting copulation by her prone breeding posture.15

  All recorded auk breeding sites were located on small, isolated islands with flat, easy access to breeding sites. It has been suggested that auks nested at mainland rookeries before human hunting pressure drove them onto islands.16 However, even in regions of Greenland where the birds were not subjected to human hunting, their rookeries were on islands. It is probable that this nesting behavior evolved as protection against terrestrial predation, especially considering how vulnerable the birds were when out of water, but the trait was likely in place eons before humans were part of the predator guild. The Paleolithic artist who depicted this scene of mating behavior likely observed a battle on an island between giant males. As d’Errico points out, battles such as this must have been impressive because of the size of the birds and the fierceness of the combat, which sparked the prehistoric artist to commemorate this scene.

  Solutrean artists illustrated deep-se
a fish species such as flounder and halibut at Cosquer, and a lifelike tuna appears at El Pendo. Perhaps these fish were caught by hook and line from the shore, but that seems highly unlikely to us. We suggest that the fish and auks illustrated in the Solutrean rock art indicate that watercraft were used for transportation, hunting, and fishing. It is unfortunate that Paleolithic artists did not depict domestic scenes, because there are no clear images of boats. However, there are also no images of tents or other forms of constructed shelters, which they must have had to survive in open ice age environments.

  The sudden appearance of Solutrean technology in Europe may also suggest the use of watercraft. Where did these people come from in the first place? Marcel Otte, a European Paleolithic specialist, argues that Solutrean technology developed from the bifacial Aturian technology of northwestern Africa and spread into Europe by crossing the Mediterranean at the Straight of Gibraltar, or perhaps farther to the east where currents are less swift.17 Although this was not a great span to traverse, such a trip would have required watercraft. The use of watercraft by the colonizers of the Mediterranean coast of Spain and France would explain the knowledge of the breeding behavior of auks, illustrated on the walls of Cosquer Cave.

  Although slightly later in time than the Solutrean, the continued use of watercraft by Paleolithic Mediterraneans is documented in southwest Greece. Here, some 13,000 years ago, long after Pacific sailors had started importing obsidian to Honshu, flintknappers from Franchthi Cave on the southwestern coast of Greece crossed 24 kilometers of open water to collect prized volcanic glass from the island of Milos.18

  Other discoveries in the Mediterranean point to the early maritime exploration and occupation of the island of Cyprus. Here, researchers have excavated a massive pygmy hippopotamus bone bed dating to more than 11,000 years old at the Akrotiri Aetokremnos. Controversy raged when the investigators suggested that these animals had been hunted to extinction—not because this meant that people had been on the island, presumably arriving by boat, but because they had hunted the hippos to extinction.19

  Regardless of the outcome of the debate over the Aetokremnos evidence, it is clear that early pre-Neolithic peoples settled on Cyprus and other Mediterranean islands more than 9,000 years ago. Several sites even show that these people not only got to the islands but did so in veritable Noah’s arks with cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs on board. The vessels used to transport these livestock were certainly not simple skin boats or even dugouts propelled by rowers. Indeed, these mariners were likely under sail in relatively large crafts, be they rafts or keeled boats.

  Such cargo capacities and sailing feats remind us of the pre-Columbian Ecuadorian balsa rafts that plied the Pacific coastline of Latin America to trade in far-flung ports. These large rafts were equipped with one or more masts and propelled by triangular fore-and-aft-rigged cotton sails. Planks inserted below the waterline through gaps between the logs of the rafts formed vanes that with adjustments in the sailing balance allowed adequate steering. According to Smith and Haslett these rafts could sail within 60 degrees of the wind.20 By comparison, modern sailboats rarely sail more than 45 degrees into the wind. Bartolomé Ruiz, a Spanish engineer, encountered one of these balsa rafts off the coast of northern Ecuador in 1526 and estimated that it was carrying more than twenty-five tons of cargo along with a crew of twenty people.21 In our opinion the pre-Neolithic settlers of Crete would have required a similar craft to transport their livestock to the island.

  There is no question that watercraft-manufacturing technologies were developed during the Paleolithic, but the earliest physical remains of a boat are from a log craft found in Pesse in the Netherlands that is between 9,510 and 10,040 years old.22 A 7,800-year-old dugout canoe was excavated at La Marmotta, a wet site northwest of Rome.23 The vessel was made from a single oak trunk and measures 35 feet in length and 3.5 feet across the stern. Three trapezoidal blocks of wood drilled with holes are thought to be fastenings for sails, while fabric fragments found in the bottom of the vessel have been identified as sail remnants. Clay models representing the same style of boat were also unearthed at the site. If these interpretations are correct, this boat is 3,000 years older than the Egyptian vessels that are known to have sailed in the Mediterranean by 3,500 B.C.24

  Along with pottery similar to ceramics from Thessaly in northern Greece, obsidian from the Aeolian Islands off Sicily or the Ponza Islands was also found at the site, suggesting the possibility that boats were used during this period for commerce. Just the fact that early Neolithic and pre-Neolithic peoples sailed around the Mediterranean demonstrates that they had already accumulated a fair amount of expertise.

  Asian maritime innovations kept pace with the advances in the Mediterranean. In the eighth millennium before the present, early Jomon navigators guided oceanworthy craft across the treacherous Kuroshio Current, which separates the northern Izu Islands from the southern end of the chain.25 They made landfall on Hachijo-Jima, 300 kilometers south of Honshu, then part of the Asian mainland. It may well be that they continued on over another 320 kilometers of open sea to visit the Ogasawara Islands. The evidence from Japanese sites also makes it abundantly clear that by 9,000 years ago Jomon peoples were not only using estuarine resources but exploiting tuna and marlin along with other resources from the open sea. Curiously, like early Mediterranean island colonizers, Jomon people carried livestock along on their voyages of exploration.

  The discovery of whaling equipment and the remains of sperm, right, and humpback whales at Bangudae, a site in southeast South Korea, attests to a major increase and intensification of maritime skills in eastern Asia by 8,000 years ago.26 Near the site, etched into a cliff face, are images of whaling activities including specialized whale-hunting equipment and the sophisticated techniques, such as using floats, employed by the early whalers here. These discoveries suggest a greater antiquity of whaling in the western Pacific, as the social and technological complexity necessary to hunt these ocean creatures required a long period of developing these hunting techniques.

  At about the time when the Jomon sailors were exploring the Philippine Sea, other Asians, perhaps closely related to the Jomon people or to the Korean whalers, piloted their seagoing vessels farther and farther north, into the Bering Sea. Some eventually made landfall on the Aleutian Islands.

  Sites on islands scattered along the rugged, partially glaciated coast of southeastern Alaska have evidence of a long tradition of exploiting the sea and its resources. Nearly 9,000 years ago the residents of Anangula, a site on the Aleutian island of Ananiuliak, were skilled seamen who exploited a wide range of sea mammals, fish, and birds while exploring the Aleutians for other resources, including obsidian from Unmak Island.27 Isotopic analysis of the remains of a young man found at On Your Knees Cave, Prince of Wales Island, indicated that his diet was primarily marine foods such as sea mammals and fish.28 Obsidian artifacts made nearly 10,000 years ago, as in the Old World, document voyages between Baranof and Suemez Island and the mainland of southeast Alaska and northern British Columba.

  Farther south, human remains from Arlington Springs on Santa Rosa, one of California’s Channel Islands, date to the Clovis era.29 Non-Clovis artifacts found on Santa Rosa are made of chert transported from San Miguel Island, 15 kilometers to the west.30 San Miguel is also the location of Daisy Cave, where excavations of a 10,600-year-old occupation level yielded sea birds, seals, eighteen species of marine fish, fishhooks, and sea grass cordage, demonstrating that the technological foundations of a maritime society were in place before the arrival of Clovis people in California.31

  The east coast of the North American continent had a much different history, but just as trace element studies can pinpoint offshore obsidian sources found in Japanese sites and Franchthi Cave, the movement of raw lithic tool stock provides the best evidence for watercraft.

  Clovis people are known to have used exotic or extra-local raw lithic materials exported great distances across several major river drainages
before the stones were used and discarded or lost. For example, a Clovis projectile point made of Knife River flint from North Dakota is reported as part of a cache buried in upper New York State, 2,000 kilometers from its source.32 Pedestrian transportation of these resources is possible, especially parallel to river courses, but foot traffic along river bottoms would be difficult at best. Cross-drainage movement would pose the biggest problems for pedestrian travelers, since major streams and rivers were impossible to wade or swim . . . especially while toting a bag of rocks! The crossings could have been made when the rivers were frozen by winter temperatures, or they could have been avoided with (unlikely) detours around the headwaters, which may have added hundreds of miles to a trip. Most crossings required a boat. Clovis people likely relied on some sort of floating transportation, perhaps including expedient vessels such as bullboats. These were simple, cup-like craft, made with an animal hide pulled over a stick frame, used by many primitive people. They were difficult to steer and usually used only to cross steams.

  Of great interest for our argument is the recognition by the archaeologist Steve Loring that a fluted projectile point found on the surface of a former shoreline of the Champlain Sea was made of a stone from Labrador.33 The Champlain Sea formed when the Laurentide Ice Sheet depressed the Saint Lawrence and Champlain Valleys of New England below sea level. Around 12,500 years ago as the glacier retreated northward, the ice dam blocking the Saint Lawrence River collapsed, allowing Atlantic seawaters to flood the valleys, creating an inland brackish sea that was home to marine mammals such as beluga and bowhead whales, harbor porpoises, and seal species that are frequently hunted by humans. As the glacier continued to melt, the crust it had been depressing began to return to its previous condition, a process called isostatic uplift, which by 10,200 BP had raised the valleys and drained the sea.