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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

I would, absolutely, if you refer back you can see that in fact I did - but then I grew up in the region, have built boats, have sailed, and been diving with the Sama-Bajau in various parts of their territory.

This would be the collision of actual real world relevant experience and ALotOfReading.

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The Sama-Bajau and all other modern humans have inherited maritime traditions that are tens of thousands of years old. They're not a good basis for comparison to the people we're discussing, just as you and I aren't.

We know very little about these people and their technology, but it's worth pointing out that this is the first definitively established oceanic crossing in human history. In fact, it's one of the few crossings we know about until many thousands of years later in the Holocene.

This is something that comes up regularly in these sorts of studies. There's a lot of ideas, skills, and technologies that look "easy" to us because we benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but are extremely difficult when you don't have that hindsight. It's entirely possible that this was a monumental feat to these people. It also might not have been, so I avoided describing it either way.

Neanderthals got to Mediterranean islands using what had to have been boats 200,000 years ago. Of course we know nothing about the boats. It must have been terrifying to be first. One thing we have learned about island populations is that a small population loses cultural knowledge over time. It is reported Tasmanians had lost the secret to making fire by the time Europeans got there, something I find hard to believe.

Anyway boats were re-invented many times in pre-history.

> a small population loses cultural knowledge over time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family is a good example that n=6 is way too few (even if the cultural knowledge is still there, the material goods, eg seed stock, hit absorbing barriers).

Do we have any reasonable (astrophysics-level) estimates of the population sizes necessary or sufficient to support some transect of various cultural and technological practices?

We do, but they're wild guesses based almost entirely on usubstantiated theoretical models. They're mostly useful for arguments between academics, not to guide any sort of intuition as to sustainable population levels.

Neanderthals settled all the Greek islands, except Cyprus. Cyprus was only settled ~12ka ago, long after humans had spread to both Australia and the Americas. The reason it took so long when the Greek archipelago was settled so quickly is that you can sail to every island in the Aegean knowing that there is land at your destination, because all the crossings are short enough that with a decent vantage point you can see land on the horizon. Cyprus is ~70km from the Turkish coast, which is just far enough that not only you cannot see it on the horizon from the tallest mountain on the coast, if you set off in a small boat (so you are very low and can't see far), the land won't come into view until you have completely lost sight of the shore you set off from.

Migration to Australia was in fact extraordinary, which we know because in an another place with significant seafaring culture, it took 50ka longer to do a shorter trip.

That the crossing of the longest stretch took place is a known fact.

The likelihood is that it was carried out by people that lived in an island archipelago chain and had, by the time of crossing, spent several generations building boats and very probably living a maritime life; huts and walkways on poles, more time on | over the water than land, diving for food, spending hours at night over shoals attracting octopus and other sealife with light.

In that context the crossing becomes a venture of following birds over the horizon for two days, some on a scale similar to what was already done to known points, once the first crossing occurs then the far shore becomes a place to stay when fishing for a generation or so and then becomes a location with a new village.

What does seem hard to imagine is humans arriving at the Wallace Line crossing never having had built a boat or a shallow water village before. I would assert that it's near certain that the required skills and technology were well in hand by the time they became essential to progress further to reach the Sahul.

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