Japan Team Plans Another Experiment to Reproduce Ancient Voyage

September 11, 2018

Tokyo- A Japanese team pursuing a multiyear project to figure out how humans came to the Japanese archipelago 30,000 years ago is planning another experiment next summer with a new approach: a dugout canoe.

In the project, which started in 2016, the team has tested a straw boat and a bamboo raft to reproduce how people may have traveled from Taiwan to Japan, but to no avail.

The team, led by the National Museum of Nature and Science, is now pinning hopes on a dugout canoe, which is currently being built for a voyage from Taiwan to the southern Japan island of Yonaguni, Okinawa Prefecture.

Financially, the team has already procured north of 30 million yen, the target it set for online fundraising to pay for costs not covered by the team's research expenses, such as those to prepare additional boats for safety and to film the experiment for the record. Contributions to the fundraising effort will be accepted until Friday.

"We want to come as close as possible to an answer to the big mystery of how our ancestors succeeded with the great voyage," said Yosuke Kaifu, a museum official who represents the team.

It is known that humans had settled in what is now Okinawa by 30,000 years ago, and the team assumes that people traveled from Taiwan, which was part of the Eurasian continent at that time. But no remains of boats have been discovered and how early settlers arrived there remains unknown.

Past experiments proved that a straw boat and a bamboo raft are stable but not fast enough to withstand strong currents between Taiwan and Yonaguni Island.

A dugout canoe can easily capsize but is likely to go faster, according to the team.

The team is using primitive technology to make the canoe. They made an ax by attaching a wooden handle to stoneware, then using it to cut down a big Japanese cedar tree and hollow out the interior of the tree.

The canoe will not be equipped with the sails, due to lack of evidence that they were used even in the Jomon period, which is believed to have run roughly from 13,000 years ago to 2,300 years ago.

The team's Web page for fundraising can be found at https://readyfor.jp/projects/koukai2. Jiji Press