Ancient canoe replica recreates a 30,000-year-old voyage

Instead of putting the pedal to the metal, a team of scientists from Japan and Taiwan are putting the paddle to the water–for science. The team used time-period-accurate tools to create canoes and used them to test the methods that ancient people would have used to travel across the sea in East Asia 30,000 years ago. Their results of these test paddles and findings are detailed in two new studies published June 25 in the journal Science Advances.

Archaeological evidence suggests that about 30,000 years ago, humans first made a crossing from present-day Taiwan to islands in southern Japan. This journey could have ranged from 138 to about 450 miles and was accomplished without metal tools, maps, or modern boats. While the timeline of when East Asia’s earliest modern human populations set sail and where they landed is fairly clear, how they did it has been more difficult to pin down. That’s where these replica canoes come in.