Post by djoser-xyyman on Feb 1, 2020 7:53:23 GMT -5
The Mediterranean Sea – where Africans entered Europe
Human genetic stories on the Mediterranean Basin: encounters between peoples along millennia of human evolution
L Pereira
The Mediterranean Sea, or Mare Mediterraneum, literally the “sea among the lands”, is the largest inland sea of the world (2,969,000 km2 ), being connected with the Atlantic Ocean at the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, which has a 14.3 km width (being this the shortest distance between Spain and Morocco) and a 300-900 m depth. The crossing between the northern and southern Mediterranean coasts is **also** facilitated between Libya/Tunisia and Italy due to the Pelagie Islands (Tunisia is 113 km distant from Lampedusa), while the Greek archipelago facilitates the entrance from the Asian-part of Turkey. The Mediterranean coastline is 47,000 km in length, 40 % of which consists of 5,000 islands and islets (these have a total area of 103,000 km2 ). We are not sure when humans began to navigate across the Mediterranean Sea (Dawson, 2013). We accept that there were seacrossings at other regions of the globe, as the Red Sea and the Straits to Australia, by around 70 KYA (thousand years ago) and 50 KYA, respectively. The best evidence for seafaring in the Mediterranean comes from the earliest continuous settlement of islands, which dates at the preNeolithic period, around the 11th millennium BC, probably connected to the better climatic phase after the Younger Dryas (Broodbank, 2006). The rapid spread of the Neolithic across the Mediterranean is another evidence of seafaring capacity, although in the western part it seems that the early navigators maintained boats close to the coast, in what is known as coastal or cabotage navigation (Zilhão, 2014). So, at least since 11.7 KYA, the Mediterranean Sea was a bridge instead of a barrier for migrations.
Human genetic stories on the Mediterranean Basin: encounters between peoples along millennia of human evolution
L Pereira
The Mediterranean Sea, or Mare Mediterraneum, literally the “sea among the lands”, is the largest inland sea of the world (2,969,000 km2 ), being connected with the Atlantic Ocean at the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, which has a 14.3 km width (being this the shortest distance between Spain and Morocco) and a 300-900 m depth. The crossing between the northern and southern Mediterranean coasts is **also** facilitated between Libya/Tunisia and Italy due to the Pelagie Islands (Tunisia is 113 km distant from Lampedusa), while the Greek archipelago facilitates the entrance from the Asian-part of Turkey. The Mediterranean coastline is 47,000 km in length, 40 % of which consists of 5,000 islands and islets (these have a total area of 103,000 km2 ). We are not sure when humans began to navigate across the Mediterranean Sea (Dawson, 2013). We accept that there were seacrossings at other regions of the globe, as the Red Sea and the Straits to Australia, by around 70 KYA (thousand years ago) and 50 KYA, respectively. The best evidence for seafaring in the Mediterranean comes from the earliest continuous settlement of islands, which dates at the preNeolithic period, around the 11th millennium BC, probably connected to the better climatic phase after the Younger Dryas (Broodbank, 2006). The rapid spread of the Neolithic across the Mediterranean is another evidence of seafaring capacity, although in the western part it seems that the early navigators maintained boats close to the coast, in what is known as coastal or cabotage navigation (Zilhão, 2014). So, at least since 11.7 KYA, the Mediterranean Sea was a bridge instead of a barrier for migrations.