I heard from Laura Cunningham's talk on 10,000 years of California ecology that there were once Tuna in San Francisco Bay. If so perhaps these fish could be caught on land?
Have discussed a bit with the author. It seems there is still some question but someone who knows fish would have to weigh in:
Not an expert by any means, but I recall a talk by Laura Cunningham on historical California ecology that spoke of the existence of Tuna in the San Francisco bay.
Susan O'Connor:
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Hi Danielle, Yes I think that you are correct and immature tuna do come into shallower water but they are still difficult to catch as they are very fast moving so cannot usually be caught on a baited hook thrown offshore. Best Sue
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Danielle:
Hmm tricky. Are the bones you've found mostly adult? I don't have access to the paper... would you mind forwarding it?
Susan:
The tuna we have are mostly between about 50 and 70 cm in length so may be immatures that come close to shore. I'm not an expert but I have been advised that the tuna would not be able to
be caught on the single piece circular baited jabbing hooks that I have in the site. I can't access the library from Japan so can't send you a pdf. Best Sue
Does this really confirm deep-sea fishing? Could have just been a combination of tuna/etc straying to shallower waters and those crossing straits stockpiling food? Or does deep-sea fishing include surface fishing in deeper waters? At first glance to me, it would be more about deep trawling or long lines.
Deep sea fish such as tuna are often found schooling in surface waters (just google tuna surfacing and you find some good videos) in deep water areas.
With two boats, a strong net and a good knowledge of your local winds, it would probably be rather easy to net a tuna and use a land-bound wind to haul a good sized tuna to shallow waters where it could be hauled ashore by manpower.
Given that arrow heads pre-date this 'fishing date' then tools would have been available. It isn't hard to assume that people who can make arrow heads could make a harpoon head (essentially a big arrow head that can have a line tied through it and was often unattached to the spear portion - as you wouldn't want the wooden pole pulling the harpoon out).
My guess would be that if they were using wooden harpoons or stone/bone, they wouldn't likely be left unused. A harpoon would be kept with the fishing equipment, not with the cooking utensils, and with a line attached you'd make sure they were out and ready for the next day rather than leave them in.
I often don't get the logic of the researchers here in that they always seem surprised no tools were found. I'm sorry, but I work in construction and you don't find me leaving my hammer and drill laying around in my kitchen and making new ones instead of using my perfectly good ones.
"With two boats, a strong net and a good knowledge of your local winds, it would probably be rather easy to net a tuna and use a land-bound wind to haul a good sized tuna to shallow waters where it could be hauled ashore by manpower."
That seems unlikely. More likely they speared the sorts of fish they could carry in whatever sized craft they had (if any). From what I gather the bones are from smaller tuna.
So essentially all the new evidence this has given us is that they sailed into deeper waters, which isn't especially a talented skill. If you can canoe in shallow water, you're going to be able to canoe in deep water on a calm day.
Yeah, aware of most of that, just querying the headline more than anything. Isn't this just fishing as much as it is deep-sea fishing? I mean, it's likely to have been a hook or harpoon more than long lines or anything like that.
"She said the first people who arrived in Australia at least 50,000 years ago must have had boats because they had to cross hundreds of kilometres of deep ocean channels to get here from south-east Asia."
Uh, Petar Stoychev swam the English channel (32km) in less than 7 hours. In 1875 Matthew Webb made the crossing in under 22 hours (5 hours attributed to fighting the tides) and getting a jellyfish sting along the way.
Kutral Ramesh at 13 became the youngest person to cross the English Channel, prior to this he crossed the Palk Strait 53km wide at its narrowest. In the same year, he completed a total of 6 channel crossings, the last of which was the Ten Degree Channel, which is an approximate 150km swim.
If a 13 year old can swim 60km of ocean, I guess adults could have certainly made the 60km stretch. Also given that there's been the suggested presence of boats on Crete since about 130,000 years ago... they could have probably just made a dugout boat from one of the many plentiful tropical forests.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/oct/17/ten-millennia-calif...