Some scientists have rowed 225 kilometers in 45 hours between Taiwan and Japan. It seems absurd but there are good reasons

In 1947 the Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl He had an idea To demonstrate that the former inhabitants of Peru were able to navigate to the coasts of Polynesia in pre -Columbian times: to manufacture a rudimentary raft and cover the journey himself. Sounds crazy, but experience went well and seems to have created school, like He has just demonstrated An anthropologist determined to reveal how humans were managed to travel between the coasts of Taiwan and the islands of southern Japan.

Along with the rest of his colleagues he has chosen to follow the footsteps of Heyerdahl, manufacture a cedar canoe with tools from the Paleolithic and then launch to the Pacific waters.

When, where … and how. Researchers who are dedicated to studying the first human settlements in East Asia have a rather accurate idea of ​​when and where the first migrations were made, but there is a question that still takes away their dream: how noses they moved?

How did they travel through sea, raffling waves, winds and currents, with hardly any resources? How did the first settlers manage to arrive for example do 30,000 yearsTo the island Yonaguniin the archipelago of The Ryūkyūcurrent Japan? After all, Taiwan is more than 100 kilometers and the distance is even higher from the continent.

“Simple questions”. That kind of questions are what the anthropologist was asked a few years ago Yousuke Kaifufrom the University of Tokyo. During his investigations in the deposits of the Okinawa Islands he found vestiges that give away that there were already humans in the region 30,000 yearsbut nothing that clarifies how they got there.

“There are stone tools and archaeological remains, but they do not answer those questions,” confesses to The Guardian. That there were no evidence did not mean that Kaifu and his colleagues could not raise hypotheses … and demonstrate them.

“We started this project with simple questions: ‘How did the Paleolithic peoples arrive at islands as remote as Okinawa?’ ‘How was your trip difficult?’ ‘What tools and strategies did they use?’ ” remember The Japanese anthropologist. “Archaeological evidence, such as vestiges and artifacts, does not offer a complete vision, since the sea, by nature, drags them. So we turn to experimental archeology, in a line similar to The Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 of the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl “.

In the skin of the ancestors. Like Hayerdahl and his mythical expedition Kon-Tiki, Kaifu and his colleagues assumed the complicated task of putting themselves into the skin of their ancestors of thousands of years ago. How did they travel? How did they guide themselves? What materials did they use for their vessels to draw the currents of the region?

First they tested with Juncos balsas and bamboo, but ended up ruling out the idea. With these materials they obtained too slow ships to overcome The Kuroshioone of the strongest sea currents and that conditions navigation in the northwestern Pacific. His next option was to try a canoe made with Japanese cedar, such as those used in the area thousands of years ago.

In order for the experiment to be as faithful as possible to reality, the researchers talled a cedar one meter thick with stone axes and then carved it until opening a cavity inside and giving the shape of a canoe of 7.5 meters of length. The result was ‘sugime’, a boat not very different from those used thousands of years ago. In 2019, after waiting for the sea to calm down, a team of five crew (in which scientists and remakes were included) rose on board and tried it.

And how did they do it? As the Paleolithic men, without GPS or any other modern navigation device, would have done only by the stars, the sun, waves and instinct. The expedition started from Taiwan Rumbo Yonaguni, in Kyūshū. The island is not visible from the Taiwanese coast (and in fact it was not for much of the journey, when it was hidden from the waves), but the scientists verified that on clear days it is not difficult to contemplate it from the mountains of Taiwan. Hence the populations of 30,000 years ago they met her.

The raft left in July 2019 and its crew had to row more than 45 hours and cover a journey of 225 kilometers before reaching its destination. It was not easy, but the team reached Yonaguni to the second night, reinforcing the theory that thousands of years ago the first Okinawa settlers were able to travel in Canoas from neighboring Taiwan. During the syglura, yes, They suffered crampspain and hallucinations and even were forced to Browse water Often to prevent the raft from getting causing.

“They achieved something extraordinary”. The experiment was completed in July 2019 thanks to the support of several institutions but has not achieved authentic impact so far, when the University of Tokyo He has revealed The experience. The reason? A few days ago there was a documentary about the trip and two academic articles published in Science Advances. In one the experts report the 45 -hour experiment between Taiwan and the island of Yonaguni. In the other they share virtual recreations hundreds of possible routes to know which could be the “most plausible”.

“The general public usually considers the Peoples of the Paleolithic as ‘lower’, mainly due to their ‘primitive'” culture and technology, ” collect the report. “In marked contrast, our experiment has shown that they achieved something extraordinary with the rudimentary technology they had.”

The experiment also confirms the growing interest in archaeological reconstructions and tests with boats that copy old models, something that (in addition to the case of Hayerdahl) we have seen in Indonesian research, France either United Arab Emirates.

Images | © 2025 Kaifu et al. CC-BY-AR

In Xataka | In 1973 a scientist wanted to find out why we fight. So he crossed the ocean in a mini raft full of strangers