Early Seafarers Ruled the Oceans With Sophisticated Boats 40,000 Years Ago, Study Suggests

The ancestors of the Polynesians settled the remote islands of the Pacific between 1100 and 900 BCE, and have long been considered among the world’s earliest seafarers. However, new research suggests that people in Southeast Asia were mastering the deep seas tens of thousands of years earlier.

Riczar Fuentes and Alfred Pawlik, researchers at Ateneo de Manila University’s department of sociology and anthropology, suggest that prehistoric Southeast Asians built sophisticated boats to fish in and travel across deep ocean waters as far back as 40,000 years ago. Their work is detailed in a study published February 8 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

“While the presence of fossils and artefacts provide ample evidence that early modern humans were able to cross the open sea, the very circumstances of why and how they moved into and across Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), and particularly the Wallacean region, remain to be addressed,” Fuentes and Pawlik wrote in the study.

The issue with studying prehistoric boating technology, however, is that they were most likely made of natural materials that disintegrate over time, leaving no direct archaeological evidence behind. Researchers, therefore, can only deduce their existence by analyzing indirect evidence such as tools and the processing of potential boat-building materials.

As such, “in this paper we explore the connection between traces of plant working and boatbuilding in coastal sites during the Pleistocene to infer how prehistoric people migrated to and through the region,” Fuentes and Pawlik explained. This included studying stone tools as old as 40,000 years from archaeological sites throughout Southeast Asia on which they identified traces of plant processing—specifically the kind of processing necessary to extract fibers for ropes and nets.

In other words, the kinds of materials you would need for some serious fishing and boat building. Additionally, sites in Mindoro and Timor-Leste revealed fishing tools including hooks, gorges, and net weights as well as fish remains belonging to tuna and shark: creatures that dwell in deep waters and couldn’t have been caught from shore.

“The remains of large predatory pelagic fish in these sites indicate the capacity for advanced seafaring and knowledge of the seasonality and migration routes of those fish species,” the duo said. Furthermore, the identification of the fishing tools “indicates the need for strong and well-crafted cordage for ropes and fishing lines to catch the marine fauna.”

This set of findings points to advanced maritime activities tens of thousands of years before the Polynesians arrived on the remote Easter Island. It also suggests that “prehistoric migrations across ISEA were not undertaken by mere passive sea drifters on flimsy bamboo rafts but by highly skilled navigators equipped with the knowledge and technology to travel vast distances and to remote islands over deep waters,” according to a statement by Ateneo de Manila University.

Looking ahead, the researchers are teaming up with naval architects from the University of Cebu to try to reconstruct these vessels with the same materials available to Stone Age Southeast Asians.

It’s worth reemphasizing that the evidence Fuentes and Pawlik base their claims on is indirect and requires significant conjecture. Nevertheless, their work provides insight into the enduring mystery of how prehistoric peoples braved the deep seas to settle islands throughout Southeast Asia long before the most well-known examples.