A team of Japanese and Taiwanese paddlers in a dugout canoe on Tuesday successfully replicated a hypothetical human migration between Taiwan and Okinawa about 30,000 years ago.
During the two-day, 200-kilometer voyage from Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan, to Yonaguni Island, Okinawa Prefecture, the team of five paddlers — one Taiwanese, three Japanese men and one Japanese woman — relied solely on the stars, sun and wind for their bearings.
They departed Taiwan on Sunday afternoon in their 7.6-meter-long, 70-centimeter-wide wooden canoe, crossing the Black Stream, which begins off the Philippines and flows northeastward past Japan.