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For the last three million years the earth has experienced regular periods
of glaciation which we call ice ages. The last ice age ended some 12-14
thousand years ago. At its peak so much water was on land in glaciers that
the sea level was on the order of 300 feet or 100 meters lower than today.
What we call the continental shelf which is under water today was back then
dry land all the way to the sea where it abruptly drops off to great depth.
In most places this is merely interesting. In some places it is critical to
theories of human development. The Horn of Africa is one of those places.
This first image is a typical graphic showing human emigration from Africa.
It is unapologetically stolen from "Our Hybrid Origins, New Scientist, 30
July 2011." It shows human migration out of Africa with rough dates assigned
to points in the migration. If the diagonal area showing where humans first
evolved is correct then this is wrong.
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| 1
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This image shows the present day coast lines which are obviously those upon
which the first image is based. It is wrong because those were not the
coastlines 100,000 years ago when we migrated out of Africa. The basis for
image 1 is simply that people walked out of Africa. It is imposing a route
based upon non-ice age conditions. 100,000 years ago there was definitely an
ice age in progress.
A full size world map of the ice age sea levels is
here.1
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| 2
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This is the above image with the sea bottoms changed to green where they
would have been dry land during the last ice age. This migration out of
Africa occurred during the ice age. Because modifying the second map turned
out to be much more difficult than expected and as this is not for
professional publication the third image is only approximate.
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| 3 |
This is one of many similar images which have annoyed me. I find it annoying
that anthopologists who are clearly deeply interested in ice age humans have
failed to look at the impact of the lower sea levels during ice ages. I
created image 3 from 2 by selecting the cyan representing the continental
shelf and painting it green for dry land. The same was done for 5 and 6.
The upper right diagonal band is at the Horn of Africa. From there it
shows a land migration to the Mediterranean to cross the Sinai into Asia.
The reason for this long migration is obvious, to get around the Red Sea, to
be able to walk all the way.
But what if there was land connecting Arabia with the Horn of Africa? In
that case the idea of migrating out of Africa would be meaningless as the
land would have been continuous sharing the same climate, flora and fauna.
Guess what? There was.
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| 4
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Image 4 is a standard map of the coast today showing the shallowest water as
the lightest blue. Any ice age worthy of the name uncovers this as dry land
which is shown in image 5.
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| 5
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Notice in this image the Persian Gulf is also dry land so getting to Iran
from the Horn has only a modest jog back west.
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| 6
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To make it more clear image 6 is an enlargement of what is today the
connection between the Red Sea and the ocean. As it is totally blocked by
land and as no rivers feed what is left of the Red Sea it was likely a salt
flat unless there was enough rainfall to make it into a salt lake. In either
even it would have been worthless for food so there would have been no
migration along it. Migration would have continued along to coast of Arabia
towards Iran.
The bottom line here is there was no need for nor is there reason to expect
leaving Africa was delayed by the Red Sea because it wasn't there.
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| 7
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So what does it change? It explains a very odd fact shows in the first
image. If the migration out occurred 100,000 years ago how is it humans are
in Australia 10,000 years before they are in Europe? As in image 7 if the
label for 100,000 years is moved to the Horn of Africa and we leave the
70,000 label in the same place, the path along the west coast of the Red Sea
is replaced by a direct path from the horn to the 70,000 then we note the
distance to Europe and Australia is about the same.
Instead of having people living in Palestine for 60,000 years before
entering Europe we do not have humans in Palestine until shortly before they
enter Europe. Humans get to roughly the modern Iran before splitting east,
west and north.
One of the "problems" with the Palestine route out of Africa is the
hand-waving required to explain how caucasians successfully re-entered North
Africa and expelling their ancestors back south of the Sahara. With this
route it did not happen that way. Black humans did not get north of the
Sahara before caucasians arrived.
And this is reasonable. Prior to reaching that area the best land for food
is along the coast. Upon reaching this region there is game to the east and
west and seasonally migrating herds leading them north.
Another consideration is that Arabia was far less desert than it is today
although it is a bit by analogy. Assuming the similar climate to Africa as
today we assume the Sahara and Arabian deserts both existed or did not exist
at the same time. In historical times the Sahara was grassland with some
forests. The final desertification occurred barely 4000 years ago. It was
verdant during the ice age. For that reason it is reasonable to assume
Arabia was verdant at the same time.
With this we cannot simply declare the migration was along the coast of
Arabia to Iran. It is reasonable to assume there was migration other than
along the coast. I have no particular speculation beyond pointing out
leaving Africa was from a different place which better matches the time
scale of human appearance in other places.
Overall the lower sea level shows any artifacts found near the present shore
which are more than 12,000 years ago were tens of miles inland. Coastal
settlement from the ice age are some 300 feet under water.
Before one starts thinking catastrophe, the melting took centuries. The
shores would have been flooded very slowly, In worst case places like
western Florida if the glaciers took as little as 200 years to melt the
shoreline advance would have been about one mile a year. Realistic estimates
put the melt at 1-2,000 years. Move along. There is Noah thing to see.
1If you download it look at the region of Alaska. You have heard
of the land bridge the Indians crossed to get to the Americas. Most people
have the idea of something as narrow as a bridge. Look at the size of it.
The southern shore is below the arctic circle and warmed by the Japan
current. If crossing in Summer think shirtsleeve weather.
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