With a primitive canoe scientists replicate prehistoric seafaring

Our species arose in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago and later trekked worldwide, eventually reaching some of Earths most remote places. In doing so, our ancestors surmounted geographic barriers including treacherous ocean expanses. But how did they do that with only rudimentary technology available to them?

Scientists now have undertaken an experimental voyage across a stretch of the East China Sea, paddling from Ushibi in eastern Taiwan to Japans Yonaguni Island in a dugout canoe to demonstrate how such a trip may have been accomplished some 30,000 years ago as people spread to various Pacific Islands.

The researchers simulated methods Paleolithic people would have used and employed replicas of tools from that prehistoric time period such as an axe and a cutting implement called an adze in fashioning the 25-foot-long (7.5-meter) canoe, named Sugime, from a Japanese cedar tree chopped down at Japans Noto Peninsula.

A crew of four men and one woman paddled the canoe on a voyage lasting more than 45 hours, traveling roughly 140 miles (225 km) across the open sea and battling one of the worlds strongest ocean currents, the Kuroshio. The crew endured extreme fatigue and took a break for several hours while the canoe drifted at sea, but managed to complete a safe crossing to Yonaguni.

Just as prehistoric people would have, the voyagers navigated by the sun and stars, as well as the direction of the ocean swells, though for safetys sake they were accompanied by two escort craft. Yonaguni is part of the Ryukyu chain of islands stretching from Kyushu, the southernmost of Japans four main islands, down to Taiwan.

The researchers previously failed with attempted crossings using reed rafts and then bamboo rafts, finding that they were too slow, insufficiently durable and unable to overcome the strong ocean current.

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