Taiwan English News
May 26, 2019 
By: Phillip Charlier

A team of Japanese researchers will attempt to row a dugout canoe from Taiwan’s east coast to Yonaguni Island, Japan, to try to understand how people migrated from Taiwan to Okinawa more than 30,000 years ago.

This year’s attempt comes after previous experiments using boats made from reeds, and bamboo, failed.

Japan’s National Museum of Science and nature launched the project in 2016, and attempted to sail a boat made of cattail reeds from Iriomote Island to Yonaguni Island.

At the time, project leader Yosuke Kaifu told a Vice reporter, “When we look at the tools from our excavations that our ancestors used, we are able to decide whether they could or couldn’t make things like canoes … For instance, we’ve found no evidence of axes from that period, so we decided that they probably couldn’t carve a log to make a canoe.”
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