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[Mister Ed]

13. Interesting. Looking further, here's what I see:

My initial search was just for maps of the Mediterranean during low-water periods. I won't link to them here because I see that they don't correspond to the time period of the discovered settlements.

Instead, I see that, at the time the settlements were occupied, sea levels were actually higher than they are today:

The current sea level is about 130 metres higher than the historical minimum. Historically low levels were reached during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 20,000 years ago. The last time the sea level was higher than today was during the Eemian, about 130,000 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

Now, this is only Wikipedia, which is not a definitive source. Nonetheless, it seems to bear out the caption in the ancient-origins article stating that, although the discovered settlements are high on a bluff today, they were at the shoreline when they were occupied.

This means that ancient mariners would have needed to traverse an even greater expanse of water 130,000 years ago than they would need to cross today. Or, if they'd only had the patience to wait another 110,000 years until the Glacial Maximum, they might have been able to hike there.