Dating Palaeolithic sites in southwestern Crete, Greece

Abstract

Discussions of dispersals of early hominins from Africa assume that Southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula were the primary passageways for migrations to Eurasia. The Mediterranean is usually viewed as a barrier to early hominin movements because pre-sapiens hominins were thought to lack the technical means or the cognitive skills to construct boats. The discovery of early Palaeolithic artefacts in an archaeological survey on the Greek island of Crete challenges this view. Here we show that Palaeolithic artefacts in the Plakias region in southwestern Crete are associated with geological contexts that can be dated to the late Middle or early Late Pleistocene. Because Crete has been separated from the mainland throughout the Pleistocene, the presence of Pleistocene age artefacts there suggests that early hominins were able to cross open water.

Formation of Late Quaternary paleoshorelines in Crete, Eastern Mediterranean

“…The ages of Cretan paleoshorelines in the literature are mainly derived from radiocarbon dating in western Crete (N > 70 samples) (Pirazzoli et al, 1982(Pirazzoli et al, , 1996Wegmann, 2008;Shaw et al, 2008Shaw et al, , 2010Strasser et al, 2011;Tiberti et al, 2014), with small numbers of samples dated in eastern and western Crete using the Optically Stimulated Luminescence (N = 8), 10 Be (N = 4) and 36 Cl (N = 3) techniques (Wegmann, 2008;Gaki-Papanastassiou et al, 2009;Gallen et al, 2014;Strobl et al, 2014). Collectively, the resulting ages range from 0.5-600 kyr BP and here we focus on those paleoshorelines dated by the radiocarbon technique which range from ∼0.5 to 48 cal.…”

River profile response to normal fault growth and linkage: an example from the Hellenic forearc of south-central Crete, Greece

“…On Crete, extensional faults cut the structural nappe units and opened basins that filled with Neogene marine sediments that are now exposed hundreds of meters above sea level, indicating long-lived uplift of the island (Meulenkamp et al, 1994;van Hinsbergen and Meulenkamp, 2006;Zachariasse et al, 2008). Pleistocene and Holocene paleo-shoreline markers found tens to hundreds of meters above modern sea level along the coastlines of Crete document continued uplift of the island throughout the Quaternary (Flemming, 1978;Angelier, 1979;Pirazzoli et al, 1982;Meulenkamp et al, 1994;Kelletat, 1996;Wegmann, 2008;Strasser et al, 2011;Strobl et al, 2014;Gallen et al, 2014;Tiberti et al, 2014;Mouslopoulou et al, 2015).…”

Editorial: Palaeolithic America

“…Ten years ago it was hard to accept the thought that early Palaeolithic peoples had the technical capabilities or cognitive abilities to construct and navigate seaworthy boats, but this is no longer the case. There is a growing body of evidence for seafaring skills amongst even older Palaeolithic peoples, for example Middle Pleistocene hominins in southeast Asia (Bednarik 2006) and the Mediterranean (Strasser et al 2010;Strasser et al 2011). It is increasingly plausible that Palaeolithic hominins were capable of transpelagic voyaging in the Middle Pleistocene, and if hominins such as Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis were able to use boats, it is hardly surprising to discover that anatomically modern humans like the Solutreans were seafarers.…”