Testing ancient Paleolithic migration with a replica canoe

"How did Paleolithic people arrive at such remote islands as Okinawa? What tools and strategies did they use?"

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[nartreb]

As a proof of concept, this stands up pretty well.

Beyond that, I'm not convinced it answers many questions about the means of colonizing the region's islands. It feels like a people wouldn't just go paddling off into the distance without a better support system, or without knowing there was something to paddle out to. Both of which were provided in this example.

Since time would erase all traces of these things - especially as more time passed - it leaves doubts about how often this was done and under what circumstances. THAT it can be done seems evident. HOW it was done wasn't entirely answered by this. Of course, this was just a proof of concept. Not proof of how it was done.

In the case of islands only two days' paddling apart, that's not so hard. I mean, beyond just hoping that there might be, or noticing birds flying back to roost in the evening going in an unexpected direction, there's always going to be cases of "fisherman gets blown out to sea unexpectedly, catches sight of distant land, returns home after the wind dies down."
Note that shallow water offers a lot of opportunities for fishing, so there's a pretty strong incentive to go looking for islands.