XPost: sci.archaeology

https://archive.is/TzZZB

Japanese researchers turned to “experimental
archaeology” to study how ancient humans navigated
powerful ocean currents and migrated offshore.

...
In 2019, in much the same spirit, a research team
led by Yousuke Kaifu, an anthropologist at the
University of Tokyo, built a dugout canoe in order
to study another aspect of western Pacific
migration: How did ancient humans, more than
30,000 years ago, navigate the powerful Kuroshio
current from Taiwan to southern Japanese islands,
such as Okinawa, without maps, metal tools or
modern boats? “Since any physical evidence would
have been washed away by the sea, we turned to
experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to
the Kon-Tiki,” Dr. Kaifu said.

The other paper charts the 45-hour journey that
Dr. Kaifu’s crew made from eastern Taiwan to
Yonaguni Island in the southern Ryukyus. The
mariners, four men and one woman, paddled the
25-foot canoe, a hollowed-out cedar log christened
Sugime, for 122 nautical miles on the open sea,
relying solely on the stars, sun and wind for
their bearings. Often, they could not see their
target island.

“Yosuke Kaifu’s team has found the most likely
answer to the migration question,” said Peter
Bellwood, an archaeologist at the Australian
National University who was not involved in the
undertaking. Such a crossing between islands, he
said, would have been one of the oldest, and among
the longest, in the history of Homo sapiens up to
that period, exceeded only by the migration to
Australia from eastern Indonesia some 50,000 years
ago.
...
After calculating that crossing the Kuroshio would
require a speed of at least two nautical miles per
hour, Dr. Kaifu searched for heavier materials. A
large Japanese cedar was felled and carved using
stone axes modeled after tools from about 28,000 B.C.
“The idea was to replicate the canoe-building methods
that prehistoric seafarers may have used,” Dr. Kaifu
said.
...

https://archive.is/5nx7X
Abstract
Archeological evidence indicates that full-scale
expansion of Homo sapiens across the oceans began
about 50,000 years ago in the Western Pacific, yet
how this was achieved remains unclear. The Ryukyu
Islands in southwestern Japan, where archaeological
sites suddenly appeared 35,000 to 30,000 years ago,
are of particular interest in this regard because
of the apparent difficulty in crossing the
surrounding waters. In this study, we test if a
non-sailing dugout canoe can be produced with Upper
Paleolithic tools, and if it can cross the
110-kilometer-wide strait at the western entrance of
the Ryukyus, where one of the world’s strongest ocean
currents intervenes. Our 7.5-meter-long dugout,
manufactured with edge-ground stone axes, was speedy
and durable enough to cross this strait. This supports
the early development of functional boats, such as
dugouts, while our experiment also highlighted that
this type of sea travel was possible only for
experienced paddlers with advanced navigational
skills.

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