What's fascinating about the discovery of Homo luzonesis is that they're from a location which wasn't known to be connected by land for past 2.5 Million years.
Considering boat travel wasn't a possibility, their origins might shed us new light on how early hominids migrated and even tell us about human settlements in places like Andaman Islands, Sentinel Islands.
> The small-bodied hominin, named Homo luzonensis, lived on the island of Luzon at least 50,000 to 67,000 years ago.
That's pretty much when modern humans made it to Australia, boats definitely existed by then. I'm not sure where the idea that pre-agricultural humans didn't have boats comes from but it seems to be rooted in debates about when migrations into North America happened. Rudimentary rafts aren't that big a leap for anyone that's seen a tree trunk float down a river, from there you can iterate pretty rapidly to something ocean going.
And if the biological Homo sapiens is 250,000 years old or even older that leaves at least another 200,000 years for sapiens or other Homo x species to have built a boat.
Just because the fossil record lacks evidence we are pretending that modern humans weren't just as smart for 94% of their existence as a species (since animal husbandry, writing etc. seemingly only developed in the past 15,000 years).
50,000-60,000 years ago there could have been another 2,000-6,000 period of near linear technological progression and trade and you would never know.
The conditions for fossilization are extremely rare. All we have is that people got there and then a hairdresser got fossilized in a mudslide and we are now elevating this person as a representative of their whole species.
plastics aren't a natural progression. it is just as likely that the social and survival pressures were very different, and that the innovations were very different
and its just as likely that people merely got lucky with primitive rafts and canoes for long distance travel
> “If rhinos can swim and get to places, certainly we can think of erectus, floresiensis, and luzonensis not necessarily just swimming but at least rafting, if not boating,” Petraglia says. “It's just pure speculation, but you could posit that and make some convincing arguments.”
Considering boat travel wasn't a possibility, their origins might shed us new light on how early hominids migrated and even tell us about human settlements in places like Andaman Islands, Sentinel Islands.