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An attempt to replicate a human migration from Taiwan to Yonagunijima island in Okinawa Prefecture showed that a dugout canoe can cross the Kuroshio Current. (Provided by the Holistic Reenactment Project of the Voyage 30,000 Years Ago)
The ancestors of Japanese who settled in the Ryukyu Islands about 30,000 years ago were likely “explorers” from Taiwan who had a clear destination in mind, a group of researchers said.
One generally accepted theory has been that the first inhabitants landed on the Ryukyu Islands, current-day Okinawa Prefecture, by chance after being swept away by the Kuroshio Current.
However, the research group, comprising members from the University of Tokyo and other institutions, said its analysis of buoy movements and other findings strongly show that the travelers did not accidentally end up there.
TOKYO â A research team led by Prof. Yosuke Kaifu from the University of Tokyo s The University Museum concluded that Japan s forebears sailed from Taiwan to the Ryukyu Islands, present-day Okinawa Prefecture, about 30,000 years ago, and did not drift across the waters, in a paper published in an international scientific journal.
Various studies show the path of the Kuroshio current running between Taiwan and Yonagunijima island into the East China Sea has not changed over the past 100,000 years.
The researchers floated 138 buoys â equipped with transmitters used to study ocean currents â from the coasts of Taiwan and the Philippines between 1989 and 2017, and 127 were carried north by the Kuroshio current.