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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

Yet another datapoint that shows people were more sophisticated than previously assumed; this is likely not isolated, it's just that there's nothing left.

I had to look up the definitions, but these canoes are from what we know as the stone age. I don't believe the type of metal used was indicative of people's craftsmanship to be honest.

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'Stone age' is a very broad term. Usually it's described in two periods, the Paleolithic during which tools were made by chipping stones to form edges and points, with dates back to the first stone tools (2.6 million years ago, or possibly 3.3 mya based on newish evidence); and the Neolithic, when tools were made by grinding and polishing and also when plants were domesticated (~11,700 years ago, afaik).

There's also mesolithic, inserted between those two, though I haven't heard it used much.

> Yet another datapoint that shows people were more sophisticated than previously assumed

Not really, simple boats and canoes predate this find by at least 5-6k years. The earliest depiction of a boat under sail predates this canoe by maybe 1-2 thousand years. The Austronesian peoples were setting sail around the time this canoe was built.

People were navigating out of sight of land, and reached Australia tens of thousands of years before this.

They might have reached North America, too. Anyway we know people got there because they butchered the Hartley mammoth 37kya.

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