In brief
A team from the University of Tokyo has reconstructed a prehistoric sea voyage using a dugout canoe to understand how early humans navigated the Kuroshio current. Their findings, published in Science, illustrate the journey from Taiwan to Japan's Okinawa, showcasing ancient navigational methods without modern tools.
In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl famously sailed across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft called Kon-Tiki to test theories about ancient migrations. Now, in a similar experimental spirit, a Japanese research team led by Yousuke Kaifu has embarked on a groundbreaking venture by constructing a dugout canoe to unravel how prehistoric humans navigated the formidable Kuroshio current over 30,000 years ago.Setting sail from Taiwan in 2019, Dr. Kaifu's team aimed to discover how ancient mariners reached the southern islands of Japan, such as Okinawa, equipped with only natural instruments like the stars and wind, devoid of maps or metal tools. Given the conditions of the ocean might have erased physical evidence of these early journeys, the researchers adopted an experimental archaeology approach, paralleling Heyerdahl's objectives with Kon-Tiki.Their recent publications in the journal Science shed light on the endeavors. One study utilized advanced ocean modeling to recreate numerous hypothetical voyages, examining different seasonality, starting points, and paddling techniques under both modern and prehistoric conditions. Simultaneously, the other study detailed the actual expedition where four men and a woman paddled more than 122 nautical miles over a 45-hour period in the 25-foot canoe, named Sugime. Relying solely on celestial navigation proved challenging, with the team sometimes unable to visually ascertain their destination. “Yosuke Kaifu’s team has found the most likely answer to the migration question,” remarked Peter Bellwood, an archaeologist at the Australian National University. He emphasized the significance of this expedition, as such inter-island navigation would rank among the oldest and longest conducted by early humans, second only to the migration from Indonesia to Australia approximately 50,000 years ago.The wooden canoe, crafted from a cedar log, was hollowed out using only stone tools, exemplifying the technological limitations of the era while demonstrating the skills and determination of our prehistoric ancestors.
