Stepping Into The Pacific

Courtesy of Google Maps

Over recent years there have been a number of extraordinary discoveries across the islands of the Pacific with regards to hominin history. And even with the peer-reviewed and rigorous work carried out by respected scholars for a number of universities and organizations the "dogma" about human evolution and diffusion remains virtually unchanged in the textbooks and lecture halls. And this specific ignoring of evidentiary objections to the dogma seems all but certain to eventually either burst forth with a dramatic rewrite of history or to add more fuel to the bonfire that is the huge collection of anomalous discoveries creating a light that outshines the dim glow of the lecture hall dogma.

Just what are some of these discoveries?

Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis
by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes
KINEZ RIZA

Probably one of the better known of these anomalous discoveries is that of 'the hobbit' or homo floesiensis in 2004 on Flores. Research indicates that this hominid lived on the island within the last 20,000 years, long after we are told that we were the only surviving homo species, and had probably been inhabiting the island for approximately 700,000 years. This later date is based on recent discoveries of teeth and a jawbone found in 2016 on the island. Also in geographic relation, in 2016 tools were found on Sulawesi, an island north of Flores, whose dating suggests unknown hominid existence on that island at least 118,000 years ago.

While most scholars accept that homo erectus populated at least some of the islands up to 840,000YAG based on discovered tools and that modern man has been found inhabiting the Pacific Islands for at least the last 40,000 to 45,000 years, it is still more considered to be exceptions and not the norm for human migration.

Further south, the aboriginal people of Australia are considered by most to have arrived no earlier than ~30,000YAG, however, some research has suggested evidence might suggest 60,000 to 80,000YAG. Either way, it appears, based on the research, that the aborigines were the original populators of the continent. While it seems that aboriginals themselves do not give a 'time value' to their history, most of us can agree that even 30,000 years would be a fair "forever" to have existed in a location.

Aboriginal corroboree ceremony.
Courtesy of the Australian News and Information Bureau, New York

Most of the other islands are conventionally thought to have been much more recently settled by people, regardless of what the oral histories of the locals themselves may or may not claim. Mostly, this thought that most habitation of 'new locations' in the Pacific occurred in the last 3,000 to 5,000 years, is based on one staggeringly arrogant presumption....that, seafaring was impossible prior to that. A weakly founded assumption that still holds much sway even though some individual researchers have proven that simple boats and competent navigational knowledge would allow for the movement of man over vast distances, both of which have been knowingly possessed by the primitive islanders since their discovery by European explorers.

Artist John Webber

Many scholars suggest that the only way for prehistoric man to have gotten off of the collective landmass of Africa-Asia-Europe is to have been swept across the seas on storm debris. Really? And if presented with the concept of well how did they survive (reproduce) in the new location, the response is that a small group (obviously mixed gender and ages) was carried together on the storm debris. That is quite the perfect storm. Actually, that would be quite a few of these perfect storms. Another more plausible, but still problematic in its own right, theory is the use of land bridges and or shallow shoals during glacial maximums when ocean levels were much lower than today.

In order to have a storm with the strength to literally move people, you are usually looking at a storm that kills people, not one that simply floats them across the sea. And while land bridges can provide the means for man to venture into unknown and new territory, there is a time limit on the access, which creates issues for any human activity that deviates from said time windows. While it is important to make sure that research is solid and can stand up to scrutiny, it should be noted that there is no amount of evidence that can stand up to close-minded arrogant dogma and it is a disservice to research, history and mankind to allow such dogma unfettered reign over the study and understanding of the human story.