It is believed that seafaring people appeared in Greece long before the first farmers and shepherds. Some 10,000 years ago, according to archaeological discoveries, these seafarers began to explore the Aegean. At Franchthi Cave in the Peloponnese tools dating to the 8th millennium BC were found, made of obsidian (a kind of hard volcanic glass) from Melos, showing that this material must have been transported to the Peloponnese in some sort of boat.

Links:
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Obsidian, eh?
That's interesting, because as many know, the native Americans were in the stone age when Curtez and his men came to what is now Mexico. But they weren't at all as primitive as our stone age ancestors. They had a very developed civilization based on stones - they had stone-based swords and other stone-based technology.
One of the most important material in those mezo-american cultures was the obsidian, which they used as a replacement to metal in all their stone-based technologies.

Maybe in the distant past, old-world stone-age people used this stone as well for the same porpuse.

I resurfaced this post coz I found a very interesting report.

Full Story

"well-developed seagoing capacity"

?

Until around 2000 BC, with the introduction of the sailed ship, what could they possibly mean by "well-developed"?

Lol. I guess it's a matter of definitions. In this case...
Well-developed=Out of ten vessels, 2 did actually float?

////////////////// Ah the EGO of "we are better off today" strikes again!

All of the above, however - excellent articles and I shall peruse them with the same vigor I do to most other "OOP ARTS"!.

Well developed means FULLY SEAWORTHY -- able to beat out those terrible storms that rage. Well developed means capable of seafaring far beyond the local shores of home. Well developed means highly evolved and EXPERIENCED sea farers. Perhaps even more than the Phoenecians. Able to carry extensive cargo for trading to the far shores. Those very shores that so many people of that time said was the "END OF THE EARTH"!

However; that DATING strikes a familiar chord again ...
Seems so many things are coming out of the woodwork that cites (circa) 11,000 years ago as a period of very interesting advancements. Then we go to THREE THOUSAND years ago -- and what do we have?? NOMADS and tent huts!!

Obsidian was always the Universal "tool" for everything from hunting, cutting, piercing - sewing (by making stitch holes) - and perhaps some uses we have yet to find out about. When spliced carefully -- it could be as sharp as a razor.

Oddyseus! How far you have come!!!

But we are only scratching the surface of all this very interesting advancement of new discoveries that place the age of humankind even further back ...

Again -- it is best to keep an open mind and NOT be startled to know that maybe some pieces of what we knew about history - may have been a little off base!

From the Gryphon's Lair

Yep, as sharp as a scalpel even.

/////////////
Good for scaling fish!
Cutting skins from slain beasts!
And one of the reasons why BAND AIDS were invented! Sheesh!

Sharp IS an understatement!! Wondering if the Mayans used this in skull surgery (trepaning) --


The Gryph
(have a good weekend Guy!!)

I agree.
The ancients were quite developed, and we discover it day by day.
The greeks were capable of building a mechanical calculator about 100BC, with, with gears that were unknown to man until the 14th century.
The Romans knew how to make hydraolic concrete, something that was unknown untill the early 20th century.
The ancient parthians of 200BC knew how to create batteries - a "new" invention from the late 19th century .

Seafaring is a very ancient practice, and is as old as homo-sapiens is. Even before we had agriculture, we knew how to build ships. Even before we knew how to write, we knew how to cross the seas.

Did you know, for example, that the ancient Assyrians (9th century BC) had amphibious troop units, which had leather-made scuba gear?

Here's a picture:

Wow, nice pic Erikl.
Good job

Are you conveying we aren't better off today? well, maybe you'd like to live in the non-insulated mud huts the Assyrians dweled in?

I kinda think you misunderstood the whole point. I think Erikl just meant to say that many discoveries/inventions thought to be recent, are actually in use since long ago. I don't think he'd prefer to live in mud hut
Right?

Correct

Couldn't explain myself better

What inventions are you talking about?

What inventions? The list is really, really long. And distinguished. I'll name two famous ones
1) Steam Turbine. Power of steam discovered in 19th century, right? Well, wrong. Heron, the Greek engineer, had manufactured a perfectly working turbine powered by steam. Link

2) Differential Gear. The AntiKythera computer
Link

Not to mention of course aaaaall the inventions and discoveries that were "forgotten" during middle ages and then "rediscovered".
E.g. the mercator projection on maps, that shouldn't be called mercator at all, since the inventor was Ptolemy, the ancient Greek geographer.

You're talking about early prototypes, ideas, and designs. "Steam device" is not as good as steam engine. By this standard Divinci created the first aireoplane and tank. I am talking about the device itself not a distant cousin. The "scuba gear" the Assyrians used is by no means what we use today, it was an early concept.

Frosty, it is difficult to say.
What we use today, is a modern design of concepts that humanity had to re-discover.
Indeed, there is little to no relations between the 19th century steam engine to the working prototype of Heron, simply because back then in the ancient times they had no real use to it. Their economy was slave-based, and there was no real reason to switch to any other economy or energy source.

The differential gear of the greeks, from 80BC, is, however, a usable calculator and no protype at all.

Same goes for hydraolic concrete, created by the Romans 2,000 years ago, but forgotten, only to be re-discovered in the early 20th century. Many constructions done by the Romans was feasible thanks to this material. For example, to naval port at Ceaseria, in my country, was built with hydraolic concrete by the Romans. Such a port was unfeasible in the middle-ages, because mud breaks and eggs - the materials used to build most houses in the medieval times - would have been deteriorated by the saltwater of the sea.

Another example is a scuba gear used by the Assyrians - although it has no relations to the modern scuba gear, it was a working scuba gear for all that it counts. It was used the same - for enabling amphibious "commando"-style troops to cross lakes and rivers undetected.
This inventions was forgotten, later to be re-discovered, only to be built with modern materials which are somewhat better than leather (for example - aluminum, which was unknown to the ancients).

The Parthian batteries, although not used for lighting the streets, was used to electroplate artifacts with precious metals (such as silver and gold), which is still been done by the same principles today.
The Parthians, however, lacked the math to develop Maxwell's electromagnetic formulas, and so were probably unable to explain why this phenomenon was happening.

DaVinci created not a protoype, just a blueprint (and of a helicopter btw, not an airplane). Steam turbine was an actual steam turbine. It did use the power of steam and did rotate. It was not considered to be of practical use though, that's why there was no further evolution on it. It's rather a marketing issue, than scientific. And of course the "scuba gear" is not the same. But it had the same concept and the same usage.

If you're trying to find in ancient times something that was exactly like what we have today, that's another issue. But that's not the point. The point is that many of the things we consider to be ideas and inventions of today (of our times), someone else had that idea before, and had put it to use.