Sailing the Kuroshio Current in a Stone Age Canoe: A Modern-Day Feat
Ancient canoe successfully navigates turbulent waterways. - Ancient Stone-Age Person Faces Challenging Sea Currents
Navigating the oceans like our ancient ancestors: A team of researchers has successfully replicated a Stone Age canoe using tools from that era and demonstrated its ability to weather one of the world's strongest currents without modern equipment. Their findings, published in the journal "Science Advances," suggest that our prehistoric forebearers could have traveled from present-day Taiwan to the southern Japanese Islands using rudimentary boats.
Archaeological sites on the Ryukyu Islands in southwestern Japan date back approximately 35,000 to 30,000 years. It was previously uncertain how the first modern humans who migrated to East Asia could have reached these islands without maps, metal tools, or advanced boats, according to the researchers.
To simulate crossing the Kuroshio Current, which flows northeastward along the eastern coast of Taiwan and Japan from the Philippines, the team considered rafts as the best option for the region. However, lead author Yōsuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo mentioned that after several experiments, rafts were found to be too sluggish for the journey and insufficiently durable.
Proposing an alternative, the team around Kaifu constructed a dugout canoe, a primitive boat made from a single tree trunk, using replicas of Stone Age tools such as stone axes. Felling a one-meter-thick Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) took six days. The 7.5-meter-long, 241-kilogram boat was christened "Sugime." In July 2019, five seasoned paddlers, four men, and one woman, set sail sans technology such as GPS or a compass. Their log reports detailed navigation mistakes due to exhaustion, water leakage, pain, and battling fatigue and heat.
Roughly 45 hours after commencing the voyage, the "Sugime" reached the island of Yonaguni, one of the Ryukyu Islands, following a 225-kilometer journey. "We now know that these canoes are fast and robust enough to make the journey, but that's only half the story," said Kaifu, adding, "The pioneers must have all been experienced paddlers with effective strategies and a strong desire to explore the unknown."
This one-way trip demonstrates an extraordinary accomplishment by our ancestors using the technology available to them at the time, the researchers concluded. However, a return journey was likely infeasible without a map and knowledge of the Kuroshio's current patterns, which probably weren't available until much later in history.
This research epitomizes the field of "experimental archaeology," where researchers recreate ancient conditions to shed light on historical events. In this case, they employed advanced ocean models to simulate numerous virtual voyages, testing different starting points, seasons, and paddling strategies under both modern and ancient ocean conditions. The simulations indicated that launching from northern Taiwan and paddling slightly southeast would balance the force of the Kuroshio Current, suggesting that our ancestors had a sophisticated understanding of ocean dynamics despite lacking maps and scientific knowledge.
In the realm of experiential archaeology, the team’s recreation of a Stone Age canoe and subsequent voyage across the Kuroshio Current showcases that our ancestors could have integrated lifestyle, technology, and exploration to navigate the unknown, with the possibility of influencing their daily travel choices based on understanding technology and lifestyle choices. Conversely, the lack of advanced tools like GPS or compass during their journeys makes one wonder about the role of technology in modern-day travel.
