Did the clovis culture have canoes?

[painshill]

CMD wrote: The aborigines were in Australia by 55,000 years ago. How did they get there?

  Maybe as long ago as 70,000 years! Mount Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia experienced a supervolcanic eruption sometime around 69,000 to 77,000 years ago and that may have been the driver for the first wave of people to flee towards what is now Australia.
We don’t know for sure but they seem to have arrived at least partly by sea, but during a period of glaciation when New Guinea and Tasmania were joined to the main Australian continent. A substantial part of the journey could have been accomplished by land bridges, especially if the arrival was as long ago as 70,000 years, when they could have got as far as Timor without ocean travel. If they arrived later, it was probably via the Moluccas and then New Guinea. Some sea voyaging would have been inevitable, but there is a strong possibility for island-hopping in short trips when sea levels were much lower and chains of small islands were exposed. The sea journey portions may have been accomplished by primitive rafts. Reed-bundle rafts would have been quite adequate for that.
The likely landfall regions have been under more than 150 feet of water for the last 15,000 years so we will likely never know for certain.
This is how we think things looked around 50,000 years ago. The open-water ocean gap between Australia and Asia was probably as small as 50 miles, and in earlier times may have been smaller still:

[image from Wikimedia]

[amateur]

1) The study that documented the increasing scarcity of lithic movement across the Mississippi as one moves south was done, as I recall, by Judith Morrow. Never having gotten to read it, I can't say whether or not she noted that the abundance of good quality toolstone along both sides, in most areas, would have made river crossings for toolstone unnecessary (a matter of carrying coals to Newcastle).

2) The existence of adzes from Paleo times on (and their abundance beginning with the still out-of-focus Late Paleo/Early Archaic eras -- Dalton in particular) would be strong circumstantial evidence for dugout making. What else would they have been useful for ?

[BabaORiley]

It has been my opinion for quite a while that primitive mans ability to travel great distances and their technology has been greatly underestimated. Humankind has a yearn to want to see what lies beyond the horizon or what is down the river or over the mountains for that matter...

[clovisoid]

I went to the First Floridians Conference last week and Dennis Stanford gave a great presentation of canoe/dugout/boat use. It didn't seem anyone in the audience that seemed at all surprised by the concept, I'd say it's a firmly established assumption that they had watercraft. I hesitate to use the word fact because we don't have any dated watercraft, but we have almost everything else.

Aside from tools and use wear analysis that match known patterns for boat making, there was some really interesting information on his theory about birch bark canoes. Painshill mentioned a great point earlier that Dennis also touched on, these weren't necessarily the small two person canoes that come to mind when we hear the word canoe. These could be large, solid craft. At some early sites they have found many quartz cobbles showing heating, and microscopic copper. Similar copper deposits have also been documented on tools from later groups processing Birch for canoes, it’s a natural compound found in birch tree sap. The heated cobbles are used to laminate the sheets of birch bark with sap, which hardens and makes a surprisingly durable canoe. Extensive pollen records showing Birch/Spruce forests at this time period. Additional evidence of boats and canoes include wedges for woodworking. South of Birch line, heated quartz tools with copper stains disappear, and wedges take over.

[-=METACOM=-]

This is said to be a dugout and is the oldest found to date....

http://www.snipview.com/q/Pesse_canoe

Wow! I'd like to have THAT for my collection