From Richard Grimmer, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, UK
Marshall presents an enthralling story of Homo sapiens and other humans crossing the sea as they spread around the world, but I fear he may have fallen into the trap of assuming that prehistoric peoples were simpler than their descendants. Why should farmers have more advanced tools than hunter-gatherers?
A hunter who might bag game of various sizes (and temperaments) would need a larger variety of stone tools than a farmer to catch, dispatch, skin and butcher these various animals. Ancient hunter-gatherers would also probably have fished, which is a great incentive to invent some kind of boat. And if hominins were already fisherfolk, then crossing the sea in a canoe wouldn’t need much forward planning, as they would already have the boat and a means to catch food along the way.
