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Ancient humans may have deliberately voyaged to Japan’s Ryukyu Islands

Satellite-tracked buoys suggest there’s little chance the remote isles were reached by accident

dugout canoe crafted using axes modeled off of Japanese artifacts

A dugout canoe (shown) crafted using stone axes modeled off of ancient Japanese artifacts successfully traveled more than 200 kilometers from Taiwan to Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago in 2019.

Y. Kaifu

By Charles Q. Choi

Long ago, ancient mariners successfully navigated a perilous ocean journey to arrive at Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, a new study suggests.

Archaeological sites on six of these isles — part of a 1,200-kilometer-long chain — indicate that migrations to the islands occurred 35,000 to 30,000 years ago, both from the south via Taiwan and from the north via the Japanese island of Kyushu.