[eesmith]

My comment was to support the parent comment asking why the grandparent comment expressed surprised that a boat was invented before the wheel.

I don't understand what the point of your comment is.

The first humans in the Americas didn't need to cross an ocean. They needed to follow the shoreline. Even now the Bering Straight is only 90 km across. As the article points out, during the Ice Age, when the sea was lower, it was all land, known as Beringia. There was no "cross-sea or cross-ocean migration".

We know humans 60,000+ years ago could cross the Weber Line, which was also at least some 90 km wide, to get from Sunda to Sahul (which includes modern Australia). This migration to the Americas would have been easier than that.

Regarding male dominated society, hunter-gatherer cultures tend to be egalitarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Social_and_eco... . One hypothesis is that male dominated culture is a result of agriculture, and specifically the horse and plow. http://voxeu.org/article/modern-gender-roles-and-ancient-far... . However, I this is a topic I know little about. I bring it up as an example of why I am confused about the point of your comment and where you're coming from.

[jaclaz]

>I don't understand what the point of your comment is.

I was actually supporting the idea that inventing the boat is (should be) easier than inventing the wheel BUT that between inventing the boat and actually being able of building big enough boats AND boats being able to cross large stretches of water AND actually using them to "migrate" a population there are some leaps.

The grandparent comment was not about "boats", was about "boats that can travel across the ocean" and the article was about the hypothesis of a migration by boat.

[Turing_Machine]

One of the indigenous boats of the region, the umiak, can be 30 feet long or so and can carry 20 people (or a fair amount of cargo).

They're easily big enough to cross the Bering Strait (in fact, before the Cold War, they did it routinely) and can be constructed completely from local materials (sea mammal hide covering, whale bones and driftwood for ribs -- modern umiaks often use metal fasteners, but traditional ones didn't).

Alaska Natives still prefer them for some tasks (e.g., whale hunting).

[eesmith]

While what you say is true, to quote the second-level comment: "They're talking about coastal migration over centuries"

That requires neither a big boat nor one which can cross large stretches of water. That's why I didn't understand where your comment fit into the topic.