Human Footprints Of Water Migration

The history of marine civilization is a historical book about how people all over the world fish and forage from the sea, revealing the important role of fish and shellfish in the rise of human civilization. Whether it is freshwater fisheries or saltwater fisheries, whether in Europe, East Asia or America, the track of fishery development and cultural development is basically the same. The vast majority of early human civilization flourished in the estuaries of rivers, lakes, rivers or places close to the sea. In order to get all kinds of food, people move constantly. Humans feed their families or families by catching freshwater fish, sea fish and shellfish. It can be imagined that river valleys, streams and coastlines are the main migration routes for human beings. Later, a large number of shells and fish bones were found in the ruins of these places.

In the Mediterranean, both ancient Neanderthals and modern people are good at fishing. Fishing is a kind of activity with opportunism. Only when the fish swim to the sea or migrate to spawn, will people engage in fishing activities. For the first time, archaeologists have found clear signs of long-term human settlements along the Adriatic coast and elsewhere. Groups of migrants settled in the inland villages near the mouth of the sea, feeding on a large number of clams, oysters and limpets. Today, in these villages, there are still piles of huge white shell mounds. Judging from the size of Beizhong, people have been living here for thousands of years.

This book makes a reasonable analysis and speculation on the origin of Native Americans from the perspective of fisheries. Genetics and geography of the late glacial period indicate that human beings began to enter the American continent from Northeast Asia. More than 20000 years ago, the earth was in the last glacial maximum period. Glaciation made the Arctic region frozen. The northern hemisphere landform was constantly changing, and the environment was extremely bad. The researchers compared the genetic structure of Modern Native American populations with those of some ancient human skeletons, and found that all American Indians came from the ancestors of the Siberian people, who first split up about 23000 years ago. Between 20000 and 15000 years ago, Siberians migrated eastward. About 13000 years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans have completely divided into two branches: North and south. One of them is the North American Indian and Central American Indian from the south of the ice age ice sheet, and the other is the inland groups in the northern part of the American continent, such as the ancient Eskimos and Inuit.

Some human sites formed before the last ice age are scattered in Northeast Asia, which indicates that hunters entered the northern part of Eurasia as early as 40000-28000 years ago and adapted to the local cold weather. Later, they abandoned most of the area due to extreme cold between 24000 and 21000 years ago. When humans migrated from Northeast Asia to North America, the temperature was 5.1 degrees lower than it is now. Apart from drought and extreme cold, most of the area is not vegetated. For hunters, the only way is to move south to areas where the conditions are still bad but the climate is warmer. At that time, the sea level was much lower than it is now. The circulation in the North Pacific created a mild climate for the Bering bridge. The grassland plant communities of the bridge fed many large mammals. Modern Native Americans are the descendants of these groups. 16000-17000 years ago, as the climate gradually warmed, they moved eastward and westward along the expanding shrub tundra belt, some returning to Siberia and some entering Alaska.

Due to climate warming and the improvement of ecological productivity, the rising sea level has flooded the low-lying areas. About 11600 years ago, the Bering land bridge completely disappeared and the river valley was submerged by sea water, forming a coastal shallow water area. For fish and mollusks, shallow water provides an excellent living environment, and the areas where algal beds proliferate are particularly suitable for fish and mollusks, and may be a migration place for salmon. How did people from Northeast Asia migrate to North and South America in a short time? The book points out that there are roughly two routes. One is along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, and the other is fishing to the uninhabited center of the southern continent. Archaeologists have found traces of human habitation along the northern coast of Peru, dating back about 14000 years. The North American land is covered with ice and extends southward to the Great Lakes and Seattle. Until 13000 years ago, glaciers melted, forming an ice free corridor, and human beings were given the opportunity to migrate southward via land into the heart of North America. At that time, South America's human population may have been small, but the fishing grounds were extremely rich. As long as there are simple rafts, people can catch anchovy in seaweed beds along the coast. In this way, human beings began the story of survival and reproduction in America.