Ancient World Review

Did Humans Live Alongside The Giant Ripper Lizard Of Prehistoric Australia?

Note: "The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonization of Australia in 1788 which marks the start of consistent documentation of Australia. This period is estimated to have lasted between 40,000 and 60,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.

Prehistoric Australia had its share of giant creatures like the "thunder bird" Genyornis and the bizarre Thylacoleo, a carnivorous marsupial the size of a lion, and the first humans who settled in Australia may have encountered Megalania, a huge predatory monitor lizard thought to have disappeared about 50,000 years ago. Also known as the "giant ripper lizard," Megalania" is the largest terrestrial lizard known to have existed."  (Wikipedia)

According to the BBC (2011), the venomous Megalania "could easily have caught prey of twice its own weight, and could have tackled animals of up to 10 times its own weight," so it wouldn't have had any trouble taking on a human being. Growing up to 23 feet long and weighing over a thousand pounds, "a fully grown giant ripper lizard would be able to tackle even the largest Diprotodon," a hippopotamus-sized marsupial. Aboriginal humans armed with little more than wooden spears would have had little chance against one of these predatory lizards.

It would be interesting to find out if some of the legends of the Australian aborigines could be traced back to prehistoric encounters with the Megalania. It's probably impossible to know, but Aboriginal mythology is full of creatures said to lurk in "swamps, billabongs [seasonal river channels], creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes." The Aborigines have at least two lizard deities: Adnoartina, the lizard guard of Uluru, and Mangar-kunjer-kunja, a lizard god who is thought to have created humans, but they hold protective and generative roles. If it's remembered at all, I'm guessing that Megalania would appear in Aboriginal legends as some kind of mythological monster.

Easter Island Statues Covered With Mysterious Symbols

"New images from the 2012 excavation of Easter Island’s iconic statues reveal the renowned heads are not only connected to giant bodies, but the bodies are covered in mysterious designs and symbols [petroglyphs], which researchers have likened to tattoos." Source: Ancient Origins (2018).

Note: This is fairly old news. The statue's buried bodies were being excavated back in 2010 and the petroglyphs were clearly visible then, according to this 2012 Live Science story. The petroglyphs can be seen in a photo accompanying the story and in the video report above.

Rock art has been discovered all over Easter Island and something like 300 sites were known back in the 1980s, according to the Easter Island Statue Project (EISP). Whatever the case, it wouldn't be surprising if the designs on the enigmatic statues were intended to represent tattoos. "Tattoo (tatau) is an ancient Polynesian and Micronesian practice that is a deeply traditional part of social, economic, and aesthetic life," according to the EISP.

Study Finds Most Likely Route Of First Humans Into Australia

Australian National University TV. Oct. 30, 2018.

"A new study from ANU indicates the most likely route the ancestors of Aboriginal people took to enter Australia for the first time tens of thousands of years ago." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"Co-lead researcher Shimona Kealy said these people probably travelled through Indonesia's northern islands, into New Guinea and then Australia, which were part of a single continent between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, when sea levels were 25-50 metres below the current level."

Related: Wildest Islands Of Indonesia, Series 1, Episode 4 -- Secret Worlds.

The City Of Nan Modal On Pohnpei Island

Video from 2017.

"Nan Madol is an archaeological site adjacent to the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei [in Micronesia]," according to Wikipedia. "...Nan Madol was the ceremonial and political seat of the Saudeleur Dynasty, which united Pohnpei's estimated 25,000 people until about 1628. Set apart between the main island of Pohnpei and Temwen Island, it was a scene of human activity as early as the first or second century AD. By the 8th or 9th century, islet construction had started, with construction of the distinctive megalithic architecture beginning 1180–1200 AD ... The earliest settlers on the island were probably Lapita culture people from the Southeast Solomon islands or the Vanuatu archipelago."

"Off the coast of a remote Micronesian island lay the ruins of a once-great city of man-made stone islands that inspired the city of R’lyeh in H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos." Source: Atlas Obscura. (1)

"Impressive in their own right, these ruins represent the remains of megalithic architecture on an unparalleled scale in Micronesia ... Evidence of the earliest human activity dates back to the first or second century BC. The construction of artificial islets started probably about 8th and 9th century AD. However, the megalithic structures were built in period of 12th to 13th century, about the same time as the stone construction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, or Angkor Wat in Cambodia."

(1) I have no idea how accurate the Lovecraft connection is here. According to Wikipedia, "the Polish ethnographer and oceanographer Jan Kubary (1846–1896) made the first detailed description of Nan Madol in 1874," so Lovecraft (1890 - 1937), a fanatical antiquarian, could easily have been aware of the site. In his classic story The Call of Cthulhu, the sunken city of R'lyeh is located in the southern Pacific, though at different coordinates.

Prehistoric Caves Of Easter Island

Easter Island is famous for its monolithic stone heads, but the island also has a few prehistoric or at least aboriginal caves which are fairly obscure. I think the video above shows the Ana te Pahu Cave, aka the "Banana Cave," named after the banana trees growing around it, but I could be wrong about that. I haven't been able to find much information about the cave beyond some tourist-oriented sites and they usually don't include much archaeological detail. If Vic Stefanu is correct in the video when he says that the cave was occupied around 1000 AD, then it can only be called "prehistoric" in a relative sense. At that time, for example, Europe was in the Middle Ages and Japan was already a couple centuries into the Heian period.

Next video shows the Ana Kai Tangata Cave, aka the "Cannibal Cave."

"Ana Kai Tangata cave is on the shoreline of Easter Island near Hanga Roa," according to The Megalithic Portal. "Its name means Eat Man Cave and according to [Katherine Routledge] was a banqueting hall for the cannibal feasts. On the ceiling are painted many birds resembling the sooty terns that flock to the island and played such a part in the bird man cult at Orongo."

Note: The name of the cave is ambiguous since it could just mean "men eat in this cave."

The Batavia Shipwreck, Mutiny & Massacre

This isn't ancient history, but who cares? I love maritime archaeology and the story of the Batavia shipwreck, mutiny and massacre is dramatic and bloody.

"On the morning of the fourth of June 1629, the Batavia was wrecked on Morning Reef, on the Houtman Abrolhos (Lat. 28º 29.422S, Long. 113 º 47.603E), off the coast of Western Australia. She was the first of the Dutch ships lost off the west coast of Australia. The shipwreck was a prelude to an extraordinary tragedy." Source: Western Australian Museum.

I'm not even going to try to summarize what happened next, but this is one of the craziest and most brutal sea stories I've ever run across. Highly recommended.

Polynesians Didn't Beat Columbus To South America After All?

Video from 2010. Much of the evidence presented in this video has apparently been disproven by later research.

The theory that the ancient Polynesians reached South America before Columbus is based, in part, on chickens and sweet potatoes.

"Among the intriguing indications that contact might have been made between Polynesians and the native peoples of South America was the supposed pre-Columbian presence of non-native chickens, allegedly introduced to the continent by seafarers from South Pacific islands. More evidence comes from the ubiquity of the sweet potato, a South American native, in the South Pacific—it was already widespread throughout the islands by the time James Cook sailed into the region in 1770." Source: National Geographic 2014.

Since this National Geographic article was written, DNA research has apparently disproved the idea that the chickens studied in South America provided a link with Polynesia:

"Researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from 22 chicken bones found at Polynesian archaeological sites and 122 feathers from modern chickens living on islands across the South Pacific. They used an enzyme to remove any contamination by modern DNA that may have clouded the results of earlier studies. When the team compared the 'cleaned-up' DNA of Polynesian chickens with that of ancient and modern South American chickens, they found the two groups were genetically distinct." (National Geographic)

As for the sweet-potato connection, it doesn't hold up, either. According to Science Daily (2018), "New evidence shows that sweet potatoes arose before there were any humans around to eat them. The findings also suggest that the sweet potato crossed the ocean from America to Polynesia without any help from people. The discovery raises doubts about the existence of pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia and the American continent."

Video from 2014. Whether they got there before Columbus or not, the Polynesians definitely had the capability to reach South America.

Comment: The "chickens and sweet potatoes" evidence may not hold up, but it still seems hard to believe that a seafaring people like the ancient Polynesians didn't have some contact with Pre-Columbian America. There seems to be a lot of plant evidence for early transoceanic contact and some studies have also found genetic links between Native Americans and Polynesia (Christian Science Monitor 2015).

According to a 2014 Science Magazine article, "Polynesians from Easter Island and natives of South America met and mingled long before Europeans voyaged the Pacific, according to a new genetic study of living Easter Islanders."

A later (2017) study, however, found that the people living on Easter Island before Columbus were genetically isolated:

"A study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology found only evidence of Polynesian DNA in human remains on the island that predate European contact in 1722." Source: New York Times (2017).

What's the truth? Who knows? The two DNA studies involving Easter Island directly contradict each other, so it would appear that DNA results aren't as ironclad as we have been led to believe. Whatever the case, though, it still seems highly likely, at least to me, that Polynesians reached the New World a long time ago. Considering their ability to make long sea voyages and spread from island to island across the ocean, I'd be amazed if some of them didn't make it all the way to South America. What kind of impact they had is another question.

Cousins Across The Sea

"The ancestors of the Hawaiian race came not from the islands of the South Pacific – for the immigrants from that direction were late arrivals there – but from the northern direction (welau lani), that is, from the land of Kalonakikeke, now known as Alaska.

"According to this tradition, a great flood that occurred during the reign of [the Hawaiian god] Kahiko-Luamea on the continent of Ka-Houpo-o-Kane, (Ta'pen Keng is the ancient name for Taiwan) and carried away a floating log of wood named Konikonihia. On this log was a precious human cargo and it came to rest on the land of Kalonakikeke (Alaska)." Source: The Ancient Hawaiian History of Hookumu Ka Lani & Hookumu Ka Honua (Ancient Wisdom).

Note: According to the legend, the ancient Hawaiians traveled from Taiwan to Alaska and then to Hawaii. The distance from Taiwan to Alaska is over 4,000 miles and the distance from Alaska to Hawaii is around 2600 miles, so that would have been an epic voyage, to say the least. This is all mythology, of course, but it does reflect a general background of prehistoric migration across the Pacific. And it's possible that the Hawaiians are related to the prehistoric people of Taiwan, an island with a deep Stone Age background.

Video from 2016.

Interestingly enough, all of these related Polynesian cultures may actually have originated in Taiwan and the surrounding area. Taiwan, originally attached to China until rising sea-levels cut it off from the mainland around 10,000 years ago, was originally populated by Paleolithic farmers. According to Wikipedia, "They are believed to be the ancestors of today's Taiwanese aborigines, whose languages belong to the Austronesian language family, but show much greater diversity than the rest of the family, which spans a huge area from Maritime Southeast Asia west to Madagascar and east as far as New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island. This has led linguists to propose Taiwan as the urheimat [homeland] of the family, from which seafaring peoples dispersed across Southeast Asia and the Pacific and Indian Oceans."

Maybe the legends of Hookumu Ka Lani & Hookumu Ka Honua reflect, in a distorted way, the real history after all.

Making A Stone Age Axe

Related: How To Make A Stone Axe.

I could be wrong about this, but I think the oldest edge-ground stone axes (1) have all been found in Australia. According to this Survival & Self-Sufficiency article on how to make stone axes, "[e]dge-ground axes have been dated as early as 25,000 years ago in Arnhem Land, Australia, and 31,000 years ago in Cape York. This is the earliest known use of edge-ground axes anywhere in the world." However, it looks like an even older find, also in Australia, has been made since the article was written. In 2016, ABC Science reported the discovery of the world's oldest ground-edge hafted [handled] stone axe fragments in Western Australia:

"The discovery pushes back the technological advance [to edge-ground axes?] to between 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, and coincides with the arrival of people in Australia ... The fragment is 10,000 years older than the previous oldest known fragments found in northern Australia in 2010."

(1) The earliest stone-flake tools date back to at least two-million years ago. Acheulean hand axes are almost as old. I'm no expert on Stone Age tools, however, so I'm not sure what the difference is between the Acheulean axes and the axes found in Australia.

Skull Of Earliest Tsunami Victim Discovered In Papua New Guinea

"Scientists have discovered what they believe is the skull of the earliest known tsunami victim, a person who lived 6,000 years ago in Papua New Guinea. The skull itself was found almost a hundred years ago, but recent analysis of the sediments found with the skull reveals that they bear distinctive hallmarks of tsunami activity." Source: Science Daily.

Note: According to Wikipedia, "Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago ... Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 500 BC. This has been correlated with the introduction of pottery, pigs, and certain fishing techniques."

Related: Demographics of Papua New Guinea. According to this article, the island has "one of the most heterogenous populations in the world ... The isolation created by the mountainous terrain is so great that some groups, until recently, were unaware of the existence of neighboring groups only a few kilometers away."