Discovery on Crete suggests humans took to the seas earlier than thought

ATHENS — Archeologists on the island of Crete have discovered evidence that human ancestors may have traveled on the seas much earlier than thought, the Greek Culture Ministry said yesterday.

Experts from Greece and the United States have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island’s south coast, a ministry statement said.

Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land alone.