{"id":30489,"date":"2025-06-25T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30489"},"modified":"2025-06-25T18:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T18:26:06","slug":"scientists-retrace-30000-year-old-ocean-voyage-in-a-hollowed-out-log","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30489","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Ocean Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japanese researchers turned to \u201cexperimental archaeology\u201d to study how ancient humans navigated powerful ocean currents and migrated offshore.<\/p>\n

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In 1947, against the best navigational advice, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members set sail from Peru on a balsa wood raft to test his theory that ancient South American cultures could have reached Polynesia. The frail vessel, called Kon-Tiki, crossed several thousand nautical miles of the Pacific in 103 days and showed that his anthropological hunch was at least feasible.<\/p>\n

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? \u201cSince any physical evidence would have been washed away by the sea, we turned to experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to the Kon-Tiki,\u201d Dr. Kaifu said.<\/p>\n

Two new studies published on Wednesday in the academic journal Science presented the results of those experiments. In one report<\/a>, advanced ocean models recreated hundreds of virtual voyages to pinpoint the most plausible routes for the crossing. \u201cWe tested various seasons, starting points and paddling methods under both modern and prehistoric conditions,\u201d Dr. Kaifu said.<\/p>\n

The other paper<\/a> charts the 45-hour journey that Dr. Kaifu\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYosuke Kaifu\u2019s team has found the most likely answer to the migration question,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 25-foot-long canoe, christened Sugime, was cut and hollowed from a cedar tree using an edge-ground stone axe with a wooden handle.<\/span>National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Japanese researchers turned to \u201cexperimental archaeology\u201d to study how ancient humans navigated powerful ocean currents and migrated offshore.In 1947, against the best navigational advice, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members set sail from Peru on a balsa wood raft to test his theory that ancient South American cultures could have reached Polynesia. The frail vessel, called Kon-Tiki, crossed several thousand nautical miles of the Pacific in 103 days and showed that his anthropological hunch was at least feasible.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? \u201cSince any physical evidence would have been washed away by the sea, we turned to experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to the Kon-Tiki,\u201d Dr. Kaifu said.Two new studies published on Wednesday in the academic journal Science presented the results of those experiments. In one report, advanced ocean models recreated hundreds of virtual voyages to pinpoint the most plausible routes for the crossing. \u201cWe tested various seasons, starting points and paddling methods under both modern and prehistoric conditions,\u201d Dr. Kaifu said.The other paper charts the 45-hour journey that Dr. Kaifu\u2019s 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.\u201cYosuke Kaifu\u2019s team has found the most likely answer to the migration question,\u201d 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.The 25-foot-long canoe, christened Sugime, was cut and hollowed from a cedar tree using an edge-ground stone axe with a wooden handle.National Museum of Nature and Science, TokyoWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30491,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30492,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30489\/revisions\/30492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}