Monday, January 14, 2013

I maybe sometime


Here's an interesting idea, retrace our species ' "long walk" out of Africa through the Middle East, Asia, North and South America to the furthest point of our colonisation of the planet Tierra del Fuego at the Southern tip of the American continent, and do it all like they did, i.e. on foot.

It's estimated that humans made this migration around 45,000 years ago although there is evidence of earlier migrations 65,000 years ago and as many as 100,000 years ago, in any case even at walking speed this journey will only take US journalist Paul Salopek 7 years to complete (and he won't be walking every day). Of course it's not likely that early humans did the trip in a oner as Salopek will, most of them probably found a nice spot along the way somewhere and stayed a few generations before moving on. Even when they did some must have left the odd tribe behind since we now see people that are physically adapted to the climate and environments of their chosen plots along the route. Its also interesting to consider the land bridge that must have existed at some point between Asia and America during this period, we already know from fossil evidence that other species made this same journey back and forth much earlier (Bison, Horses, Bears etc.) but even during warmer periods the crossing must have been a fantastically daunting proposition for barefoot primates equipped only with with fur coats, stone tools and curious minds.

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