A Japanese team has concluded that it was possible to travel from Taiwan to Japan's westernmost island of Yonaguni in a dugout canoe 30,000 years ago.

The voyage in a log boat, with no sails, was possible if all the rowers were highly skilled and adjusted their course with the fast Kuroshio current in mind, the team said.

The team's findings resulted from a project by Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science to re-create how Japanese ancestors traveled from mainland China to present-day Taiwan, which was connected by land at the time, and then sailed to Yonaguni, east of Taiwan.