You could also cross in a raft. Or on a log. You can swim across (riskily, quite riskily) at the straight of gibraltar itself. We've known humans have been seafaring tens of thousands of years before our earliest archaeological evidence (although dugout canoes are likely just as old, it's very bad conditions for preservation outside of stuff like northern european bogs/the dead sea, and they often just look like logs underwater, not boats)—at no point has Australia been fully connected to continental asia. Hell, this is true for H Erectus, let alone h s sapiens—it's not difficult to believe H Erectus might have pieced together how to lash logs together.

On articles like this, I strongly recommend just ignoring the title. It's enough to make anyone with a mild background in the subject frustrated. The research itself remains incredibly interesting.

I don't see how that quote or the article contradicts the title?

It's still a sea, even if you stay within sight of land.

> Many potential stopovers are now submerged, making it hard to find further evidence for these voyages

What’s your point?

What's your problem?

That I don’t understand the point they’re making. Was that not obvious?

I’m so sorry, I don’t understand the disconnect.

> Hunter-gatherers from Europe and North Africa could have traversed

“May” and “could have” aren’t meaningful, and the quotes ends with additional ambiguity.

I don’t see the problem. They’re making a claim and have some evidence. That of course doesn’t mean they’re actually correct, but that’s their claim.

You're interpreting 'could have' as a possibility when it can also be interpreted as a statement of capability.

- Evidence X, Y, Z points to a European origin for these discoveries.

- How could Europeans have got to North Africa so long ago?

- They could have done it by island hopping.