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cat 1, 30,000 years ago


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voyage_16x9.jpg?itok=qtZHYOs8

 

In the next week or so, five adventurers will attempt to paddle a primitive hand-hewn canoe across 200 kilometers of ocean in hopes of revealing how humans originally populated East China Sea islands.

 

The 40-hour trip, from Taiwan to Yonaguni, the westernmost of Japan’s Okinawa Islands, is the culmination of a 6-year effort to experimentally determine what kinds of craft Paleolithic peoples may have built and used, and how they navigated over long ocean voyages.

 

Kaifu’s team—all seasoned ocean kayakers—will be paddling a log boat or dugout canoe of a type found in China and Japan dating back 8000 years.

 

The team used simple stone axes, modeled on Paleolithic era archeological findings in Japan, to chop down a 1-meter-thick tree and then hew it into a 7-meter-long, 350-kilogram dugout.

 

To emulate the ancients in other ways, the crew will not use modern navigational tools. Instead, the team includes a Maori man from New Zealand who can navigate by following the stars and judging winds and ocean swells.

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/explorers-voyage-japan-primitive-boat-hopes-unlocking-ancient-mystery

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Update, 10 July, 6:20 a.m.: A team of adventurers succeeded in paddling a primitive dug-out canoe across more than 200 kilometers of ocean to demonstrate how ancient humans may have reached the Ryukyu Islands scattered between Taiwan and Japan. “It was an unexpected big success,” says archeologist Yousuke Kaifu of Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.

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well done!

 

bet there were blisters aplenty

 

They lost their way the second night when clouds obscured the stars they used to navigate.

Rather than paddle in an uncertain direction, they decided to rest.

As they slept, ocean currents carried them toward their target. 

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Current thinking is Polynesians and a number of other Pacific peoples originated from Taiwan. They island hopped across the Pacific in a series of purposeful migrations, eventually discovering NZ.

 

I lived in Taiwan for four years and had the good fortune to stay a night in a small hotel owned by an aboriginal family in the mountains. We managed a basic conversation (in Chinese) discussing their people’s ultimate connection with Maori.

 

More recently I was in Tonga (having sailed there) and had a couple of conversations with locals who were aware of their ancestors’ navigational prowess but lamented this was lost following arrival of Christian missionaries. Back then their navigators, like other highly skilled and specialised trades, were venerated “tohunga” - sort of priests that the missionaries considered pagans that had to be overcome and discredited.

 

Much recent research and the removal of Eurocentric bias has lead to the realisation of how great the early Pacific navigators were. What they achieved with limited technology is amazing. Big respect from this sailor!

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a pic of an aboriginal taiwanese, from about 50 years before the millions? of han chinese of chiang kai-shek arrived, escaping from mao's mainland china in 1948

 

note the snazzy taiwanese cloud leopard cloak  

thought to have been extinct the last 100 years

they now think their may be a few left in the misty mountains

455px-Taiwanese_Aborigine_leopard_fur_by

 

 

 

Saisiyat-Tribe-Taiwan-Aboriginal.jpg

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