Stone Age Sailors

Alan H. Simmons is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA. He has excavated extensively in Cyprus, in the Middle East, and in the American Southwest, including heading a long-term project at the prehistoric site of Akrotiri Aetokremnos on Cyprus. Simmons is author of half a dozen books and over 150 research papers and reports on the prehistory of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. His book The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East won the G Ernest Wright Book Award of the American Schools for Oriental Research. Katelyn Benedetto is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA.

"This timely and important book will surprise-and challenge-the reader. It marshals the growing body of surprisingly diverse evidence for prehistoric voyaging and seafaring by pre-humans and early humans around the world, and it challenges the reader to re-think the role of seafaring in human prehistory. If our early hominin ancestors were able to cross large bodies of open water, we will henceforth have to regard seas and oceans not as barriers, but as open lanes connecting the islands and continents of the world, and to reconsider the timing and course of early human adaptive radiations from first principles." -Curtis Runnels, Boston University "Scholars of prehistory have been waiting for this book. The approach is global, but the focus is on the Eastern Mediterranean at least 12,000 years before the present. UNLV archaeologist Simmons and doctoral student DiBenedetto ground this book in their work on Cyprus. The authors explore and explain all aspects of seafaring before the Neolithic, clearly demonstrating that humans became sailors soon after they learned to paddle rafts. ... One of the book's many strengths is their step-by-step approach to putting all the pieces of the puzzle together--seamanship, currents, and winds. ... For methodology, explanations, and discussion of shipbuilding 12,000 to 4,000 years ago, there is not a better guide when combined with Brookbank's book [The Making of the Middle Sea]. Summing Up: Essential." -R. Higham, emeritus, Kansas State University

• Chapter 1 Neanderthals Afloat? Introduction and Research Background; Chapter 2 A Brief History of Global Seafaring and Archaeology, Katelyn DiBenedetto, Alan H. Simmons; Chapter 3 Environmental Considerations, Katelyn DiBenedetto, Alan H. Simmons; Chapter 4 Of Boats, Invisible Sites, and Archaeological Method: The Difficulty of Documenting Early Seafaring Activity, Katelyn DiBenedetto, Alan H. Simmons; Chapter 5 Pre-Neolithic Seafaring in the Mediterranean: The Claims and the Evidence; Chapter 6 Cyprus and the Hippos; Chapter 7 Current Developments in Cyprus Since 2000 A.D; Chapter 8 Current Developments on Other Islands; Chapter 9 Conclusions;