Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Hominins did not need boats to settle islands


questionmark

Recommended Posts

The early human colonisation of islands might not have been plain sailing. Instead of using boats to deliberately settle on Indonesian islands, hominins may have arrived as castaways, carried on floating debris after floods.

David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University and Graeme Ruxton of the University of St Andrews, both in the UK, used population estimates from the early settlement of Polynesia to model the likely success of island settlement attempts in human prehistory.

They found that five young couples had a 40 per cent chance of giving rise to a population of 500 – or founding a population that survived for 500 years. Ten random castaways had only a 20 per cent chance of similar success. But throwing in between one and four additional castaways every 50 years raised the chances of an accidental settlement succeeding to 47 per cent.

Read more

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

You mean thay arrived their on floating rafts maid of reads?

Those crafty hominims ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting article, but they didnt take their math far enough back

"They found that five young couples had a 40 per cent chance of giving rise to a population of 500 – or founding a population that survived for 500 years. Ten random castaways had only a 20 per cent chance of similar success. But throwing in between one and four additional castaways every 50 years raised the chances of an accidental settlement succeeding to 47 per cent."

Tell me what the chance of "5 young couples" surviving as castaways is? Land bridge or actual nautical ability seems much more likely. Just my two cents.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting article, but they didnt take their math far enough back

"They found that five young couples had a 40 per cent chance of giving rise to a population of 500 – or founding a population that survived for 500 years. Ten random castaways had only a 20 per cent chance of similar success. But throwing in between one and four additional castaways every 50 years raised the chances of an accidental settlement succeeding to 47 per cent."

Tell me what the chance of "5 young couples" surviving as castaways is? Land bridge or actual nautical ability seems much more likely. Just my two cents.

The intrinsic problem you are ignoring is: How many island settling do we know that would have needed a boat or by accident in the stone age? And suddenly we come to a number equal of about 2 every 10,000 years that were successful. And that is way beyond the statistical average possibility.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wouldn't be much use if both the castaways were either male or female lol

Still, I suppose when a flood, or tsunami turned up, the idea was to grab the nearest female and drag her onto your floating debris just in case you happened upon a deserted island.

Well, there was no TV in those days was there :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.