Human Dispersal, Human Evolution, and the Sea: The Palaeolithic Seafaring Debate

Human Dispersal, Human Evolution, and the Sea is the first book-length treatment of what has become known as the global Palaeolithic seafaring debate. Until recently, common consensus dictated that only in the last ten thousand years have humans routinely, permanently, and cross-culturally traversed seas and oceans to colonize new lands. New (and sometimes contentious) data from the Mediterranean and Island Southeast Asia challenge that consensus, suggesting to some researchers that long-distance voyaging is a behavior of great antiquity. These scholars suggest that oceans and seas facilitated and encouraged planetary dispersal in our own genus rather than acting as barriers to dispersal. If this model is correct, it necessitates a radical rethinking of not only the big patterns of human history but also more deeply our models of emergent human behavior and when the capacity for highly complex and coordinated group behaviors emerged.
 
Exploring the data in detail, the authors here show how a complex series of interrelated problems has tended to be treated in reductionist or overly simplistic terms. Cherry and Leppard elucidate this complexity by bringing to bear perspectives from archaeology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. They demonstrate not only that a series of unique circumstances—evolutionary, behavioral, environmental, and economic—conspired to drive mass, ubiquitous global colonization over the last ten millennia; but also that earlier, sparser data provide real insight into key social and behavioral thresholds, even if there is little evidence to support the “oceans as highways” model for species other than our own.
 
A major intervention in this important debate, Human Dispersal, Human Evolution, and the Sea explains the deep significance of the problem and the profound implications for history, archaeology, and biological anthropology.
 

John F. Cherry is the Joukowsky Family Emeritus Professor of Archaeology & the Ancient World and Emeritus Professor of Classics at Brown University and has previously held positions at the University of Michigan and the University of Cambridge. He is coauthor of An Archaeological History of Montserrat in the West Indies and coeditor of Archaeology for the People.
 
Thomas P. Leppard is an archaeologist and prehistorian. He is coauthor of Human Dispersal, Human Evolution and the Sea and Cities and Citadels and coeditor of Violence and Inequality and Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity.