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Voyage from Taiwan to Japan Isle 30,000 Yrs Ago Possible: Team

Voyage from Taiwan to Japan Isle 30,000 Yrs Ago Possible: Team

A dugout canoe with five people aboard, which set off from eastern Taiwan into the Kuroshio current in July 2019 (right in the photo), and a diagram of its position at the time (bottom left, red triangle. Top right is Yonaguni Island, the black line indicates the voyage route) (Courtesy of team leader Yosuke Kaifu)
A dugout canoe with five people aboard, which set off from eastern Taiwan into the Kuroshio current in July 2019 (right in the photo), and a diagram of its position at the time (bottom left, red triangle. Top right is Yonaguni Island, the black line indicates the voyage route) (Courtesy of team leader Yosuke Kaifu)

   Tokyo, June 26 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese team has concluded that it was possible to travel from Taiwan to Japan's westernmost island of Yonaguni in a dugout canoe 30,000 years ago.
   The voyage in a log boat, with no sails, was possible if all the rowers were highly skilled and adjusted their course with the fast Kuroshio current in mind, the team said.
   The team's findings resulted from a project by Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science to recreate how Japanese ancestors traveled from mainland China to present-day Taiwan, which was connected by land at the time, and then sailed to Yonaguni, east of Taiwan.
   The findings were included in two papers published in U.S. journal Science Advances on Wednesday.
   "You can see Yonaguni from some of the high peaks in Taiwan, but you don't arrive by chance (at Yonaguni) just by drifting," said Yosuke Kaifu, the team's leader and professor at the University of Tokyo.

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AFP-JIJI PRESS NEWS JOURNAL


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