"How did Paleolithic people arrive at such remote islands as Okinawa? What tools and strategies did they use?"
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Testing ancient Paleolithic migration with a replica canoe
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Very interesting. Loves me some experimental archaeology! I have little doubt humans could create reasonably advanced watercraft 30000 years ago. They displayed large scale woodcrafting technique 450,000 years ago. They were making spears 300,000 years ago. Query: What was the regions oceanic geography like 30,000 years ago? Were there islands in between perhaps? Were the land masses enough larger to ease the targeting issue?
The term "stone age" itself exhibits reverse survivorship bias. Wood preserves extremely poorly in nearly all circumstances. Most tools in prehistory would have almost certainly been made of wood. It should more accurately be called "the wood age"
The term "stone age" itself exhibits reverse survivorship bias. Wood preserves extremely poorly in nearly all circumstances. Most tools in prehistory would have almost certainly been made of wood. It should more accurately be called "the wood age"
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I'm always amazed with the courage of the first sailors that struck out on a voyage to find land, not knowing if any land even existed and where it might be.
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What’s most fascinating to me about experimental archaeology is how often they find something to be not all that difficult, once actually trying it.
One unexpected result I remember from a NOVA episode about Petra is that it turns out you mostly don’t need much in the way of scaffolding to carve those facades into the cliff walls. You can use a couple ladders, drill holes up near the level you want the top of the carving to be, pound in some supports and lay a board across those supports. You access the board using just a ladder. You start at the top, and as you work your way down, drill more holes and move the board down. The old holes disappear as you carve over them. Pretty quickly, you don’t even need ladders anymore, since the scrap builds up as a nice, useful ramp. At middle heights, the ramp is enough and you don’t even need the board to stand on anymore.
The biggest carvings, such as the “Treasury” facade, wouldn’t have been quite as simple, of course, just considering the greater height.
Another example I remember seeing is how easily those large construction blocks the Inca used can actually be moved from quarry to construction site. They built cobblestone roads, and even a very heavy stone can be pulled over a wet cobblestone road with not that many people using ropes. There are still questions about other aspects of how they worked with those big stones, but that part is pretty well put to bed.
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The explanation is even simpler in this case. Yonaguni is well-known in Japan as one of the few places in the country where you can see another country—Taiwan in this case—with your naked eyes, although you can only see mountainous parts, and only when the weather is just right. By implication, while Yonaguni is below the horizon when viewed from Taiwan at sea level, you should be able to spot it if you climb the said mountain when the weather is just right.
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While wood was certainly commonly used for many things, including boats and houses, stone was usually used to shape that wood, and for weapons (hunting and fighting), and "special" rocks like obsidian, flint and jade were highly prized. Likewise bone was valued and used for fish hooks, spear tips, hair combs and even musical instruments. When the first pre-human picked up stick, that was the start of the "wood age". Once they got to banging the rocks together and making simple stone tools, that was next level tech.
We don't abandon certain tech just because we have more advanced ones. I'm typing this on a wooden desk, that I made using modern metal and electrical / combustion powered tools.
"Stone Age" here in NZ is pretty much recent, and recorded, history. So although the Polynesians didn't have metal or written language, they weren't "primitives". They had extensive knowledge and skills, that were both survival and "cultural" related.
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And, I am guessing, those local resources were probably controlled by the "local oligarchy" so maybe it was "explore or never have enough stuff to have your own family, etc.
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The technology does not need to be developed in concert, and most likely wasn't. The canoe used for this experiment, as viewed in the amazing documentary, appears to have bamboo attached to the top exterior of the hull. Aside from deflecting water that would otherwise enter the vessel, the bamboo adds stability. It is not a big leap to go from there to adding an ama to extend that stabilizer farther from the hull to create even more stability. after that, the tinkerers can focus on making propulsion easier.
In all of my canoe experience/experiments, improving stability comes before improving propulsion; whether it's adding a sail or motor, paddling harder, or adding more paddlers. Stability is key. Going in the opposite order, at least for me, results in a soggy mess and the need to purchase a new phone.
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Wow, what a gripping and emotional documentary. When the credits were rolling, I was literally crying. It is a must watch for anyone with an interest in boat building, paddling, navigation, or woodworking with stone tools.
Per the documentary: the island the paddlers traveled to is easily visible from the hills of Taiwan, but not from the shore of Taiwan. 30k years ago, the sea level was 80m lower.
Thank you Ars for reporting on this, and expanding my Canoe Library.
Per the documentary: the island the paddlers traveled to is easily visible from the hills of Taiwan, but not from the shore of Taiwan. 30k years ago, the sea level was 80m lower.
Thank you Ars for reporting on this, and expanding my Canoe Library.
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Same group. They first tried reed canoes, then bamboo canoes, before settling on the dugout canoe. Even that took several tries to get one stable in the water.
It's all in the video attached to the article.
It's only 6 minutes long.
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You'd love Czech Villa Nova (sadly not English so translators needed): https://www.villanova.cz/ It started back in 1992.
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You don't need to simply go out one day and decide to find a new land in one step. You take multiple trips that are well within your capabilities, exploring somewhat farther each time and avoiding areas that don't appear promising. Seeing seabirds off in the distance can provide clues that there is a potential nesting site to be found, since they tend to not lay eggs on the ocean, etc.
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The term bricolage, in my reading flowing through Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind and Sheri Turkle’s Evocative Objects, is derived from the French term bricoler, “to tinker”. And the spirit of “tinkering” or “curiosity” or “exploration” or “opportunity” is a factor I am willing to accept as being interwoven with such seafaring. I can also imagine dwindling resources and opportunities, strategies of inheritance and family obligations, and invasion, government revolution, religious reform, and civic unrest, being interwoven as motives. Exploring opportunity and/or fleeing misfortune.
High-risk escape hatches may be interwoven with the romance of adventure through the pleasures of escape (“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”), the pleasures of spite, or as a response to shame, such that risks and rewards are realigned.
It may be that the nature of pornography, [much of popular] television [programming], and video games in our society dulls our senses to the sensibilities of action of our forebears.
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If someone gives you a shotgun to kill an elephant with, they do not have your best interests in mind.
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Sadly, my first guess would be fishermen who were either blown to an island by a storm and made a desperate escape back, or people desperate for food after their own food supplies in the area had (for whatever reason) collapsed.
Risking your life on the open sea when your life already involves quite a lot of risk seems like a hard sell—particularly when you are the first, and so you literally have no idea whether you will ever encounter more land. Perhaps the ocean just goes on forever, or you will fall of the edge of the Earth, or maybe the land is just too far away from where you can make it to with your supplies and (potentially) fishing.
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Very "dear old dad just wrote me into the will and now we're on a hunting trip to bond" energy.
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Oh, you could certainly wound an elephant with a shotgun. They wouldn't JUST be angry.
But it wouldn't be the kind of wound that prevents an elephant from expressing their feelings about being wounded and angry to you...lol.
And angry wounded elephants have been known to express themselves in impolite ways, with no regard for interspecies harmony.
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You mean they'd sue you for cost of medical care plus punitive damages of $1.5M per shrapnel impact!?
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I don't think any paleolithic canoes survived the millenia, so the outrigger would not have survived, either. They may have had outriggers
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Albino_Boo
Ars Praefectus
There's a couple from around 10,000 years ago but nothing from paleolithic. The ones from the mesolithic do not have outriggers
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I would always consider coracle/umiak type vessels in these contexts as leather- and wood-working would be early technologies evidence of which would have a vanishingly small chance of surviving centuries let alone millennia.
A leather or skin covered tent inverted is potentially inspiration for a coracle or canoe.
People 30,000 years ago were just as clever (and in these dismal times arguably cleverer) as the contemporary population just a lot, lot fewer.
Humans do seem to produce a fair number of lunatics, a small fraction of whom come up with inspired ideas which find practical use amongst the less inspired but saner population. We are fascinated with novelty and have whole industries and social constructs to support it's creation and propagation vide The fashion industry.
While palaeolithic populations were tiny, the time×population product would produce enough inspired nutters over millennia to create most of the feasible novel technologies and potentially their propagation (limited by intergroup separation.) I suppose we must have eventually.
I can also imagine a group, using a technology developed on the mainland to migrate to a distant island where the resources to maintain that technology were absent, would eventually lose or discard that technology.
A leather or skin covered tent inverted is potentially inspiration for a coracle or canoe.
People 30,000 years ago were just as clever (and in these dismal times arguably cleverer) as the contemporary population just a lot, lot fewer.
Humans do seem to produce a fair number of lunatics, a small fraction of whom come up with inspired ideas which find practical use amongst the less inspired but saner population. We are fascinated with novelty and have whole industries and social constructs to support it's creation and propagation vide The fashion industry.
While palaeolithic populations were tiny, the time×population product would produce enough inspired nutters over millennia to create most of the feasible novel technologies and potentially their propagation (limited by intergroup separation.) I suppose we must have eventually.
I can also imagine a group, using a technology developed on the mainland to migrate to a distant island where the resources to maintain that technology were absent, would eventually lose or discard that technology.
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Albino_Boo
Ars Praefectus
It wasn't until the invention of farming was there sufficient food surplus to allow specialisation. Hunter gatherer groups maxed out at around 100 people and the vast majority of the time was spent in survival related tasks. The Neolithic farming settlement of Catal Huyuk had a population of around 4000 people. The settlement of the deep islands of the Pacific took place within the last 2000 years, the with Easter island only reached within the last 1000 to 800 years. The settlement of the close islands of the Pacific took place somewhere around 23,000 years ago. The settlement of the deep island of the Pacific was done by a culture originated in the Neolithic, of farmers in what is now Southern China.I would always consider coracle/umiak type vessels in these contexts as leather- and wood-working would be early technologies evidence of which would have a vanishingly small chance of surviving centuries let alone millennia.
A leather or skin covered tent inverted is potentially inspiration for a coracle or canoe.
People 30,000 years ago were just as clever (and in these dismal times arguably cleverer) as the contemporary population just a lot, lot fewer.
Humans do seem to produce a fair number of lunatics, a small fraction of whom come up with inspired ideas which find practical use amongst the less inspired but saner population. We are fascinated with novelty and have whole industries and social constructs to support it's creation and propagation vide The fashion industry.
While palaeolithic populations were tiny, the time×population product would produce enough inspired nutters over millennia to create most of the feasible novel technologies and potentially their propagation (limited by intergroup separation.) I suppose we must have eventually.
I can also imagine a group, using a technology developed on the mainland to migrate to a distant island where the resources to maintain that technology were absent, would eventually lose or discard that technology.
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Indeed Taroko Mountain area in Taiwan is known for offering views of Yonaguni Island, so it's all possible.
Once people know that there is land "out there", it's just a matter of time before somebody will try the voyage.
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Çatalhöyük, Karan Tepe, Göbekli Tepe, and so on are all pre-agricoltural sites.
They were sedentary but they didn't yet domesticated plants.
In the area we can see some forms of specialization even if not to the extent that was permitted by farming.
Shubayqa 6 in Jordan is a very good example with clear signs of being a center for the production of beads
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Albino_Boo
Ars Praefectus
Theres is evidence of farming in Anatolia. The interpretation of it being a sedentary only site is not universally accepted. The cultures that moved into Pacific island was hunter gatherers. Some of their descendants in Papua New Guinea remain hunter gatherers today
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Also all the countless animals, birds, and plants that beat humans to everywhere.
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This experiment seems almost as misdirected as the Ra project mentioned in the comments.
The latest whole genome study I know of from last year convincingly showed that the Japanese hail from 3 populations of which the Okinawa group are mostly related to the northern Jomon settlement. And an outsider without the cultural context would note the Korean-Japan geography. That fits the video dated fossil find age progression which I would be careful with - there might be a Japanese reference at the end of the video - but the anticorrelation (in assumedly sparse data) was not discussed by the narrator.
Video snapshot:
Whole genome study:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi8419
The Jomon cluster is of course a two-way street since Taiwan was also settled by the Asian mainland Jomon, and why the experiment adds more conflicting data. But here the PCA prefers a Japanese mainland gradient (in the Japan genome data). Another context is the mentioned - luckily warm - Kuroshio ocean current. It has to be crossed twice if you want to explain migrations from Taiwan and Japan, and it may be what protected the Okinawan Jomon heritage besides the island jumping.
Wikipedia sketch and caption:
Ocean currents which surround Japan islands (1. Kuroshio 2.Kuroshio-Zokuryu 3.Kuroshio-Hanryu 4.Tsushima-Danryu 5.Tsugaru-Danryu 6.Sohya-Danryu 7.Oyashio 8.Liman-Kanryu)
The latest whole genome study I know of from last year convincingly showed that the Japanese hail from 3 populations of which the Okinawa group are mostly related to the northern Jomon settlement. And an outsider without the cultural context would note the Korean-Japan geography. That fits the video dated fossil find age progression which I would be careful with - there might be a Japanese reference at the end of the video - but the anticorrelation (in assumedly sparse data) was not discussed by the narrator.
Video snapshot:
Whole genome study:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi8419
The Jomon cluster is of course a two-way street since Taiwan was also settled by the Asian mainland Jomon, and why the experiment adds more conflicting data. But here the PCA prefers a Japanese mainland gradient (in the Japan genome data). Another context is the mentioned - luckily warm - Kuroshio ocean current. It has to be crossed twice if you want to explain migrations from Taiwan and Japan, and it may be what protected the Okinawan Jomon heritage besides the island jumping.
Wikipedia sketch and caption:
Ocean currents which surround Japan islands (1. Kuroshio 2.Kuroshio-Zokuryu 3.Kuroshio-Hanryu 4.Tsushima-Danryu 5.Tsugaru-Danryu 6.Sohya-Danryu 7.Oyashio 8.Liman-Kanryu)
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Were they open-ocean boats, though? It seems possible that boats with and without outriggers would have been made for different purposes.
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Well, no, not really.
First of all, the period we're discussing here--approximately 35,000 years ago--is much older than the Jomon era, which dates from 18,000 to 10,000 years ago. So the people in question here are potential ancestors to the Jomon people, not the Jomon people themselves. This demonstration does not preclude the possibility that the descendants of the Taiwan-Yonaguni sailors made it to the main Japanese archipelago, evolved their genes and possibly mixed there with other races, then re-settled Okinawa sometime during the Jomon era to form the genetic basis for modern-day Okinawans.
Second of all, the reason the Korean connection in this era is considered unlikely is not because of some cultural conflict, but because the Jomon people's DNA makeup differs significantly from other groups in East Asia. Heavy influx of Korean/Chinese blood came much later, starting in the Yayoi period, which began 10,000 years ago. Extant groups that are genetically the most similar to the Jomon are found instead in places like Thailand, Tibet and the Andaman Islands. From this, it is theorized that the Jomon people were offshoots of the first group of humans to settle Southeast Asia, who then migrated north to Japan along the Pacific coast. Note that Taiwan had a land bridge with China during the last Ice Age.
Finally, I wouldn't put much credence in the anti correlation of fossil age, as there are so few samples.
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