Advanced maritime adaptation in the western Pacific coastal region extends back to 35,000–30,000 years before present

Abstract

Maritime adaptation was one of the essential factors that enabled modern humans to disperse all over the world. However, geographic distribution of early maritime technology during the Late Pleistocene remains unclear. At this time, the Indonesian Archipelago and eastern New Guinea stand as the sole, well-recognized area for secure Pleistocene evidence of repeated ocean crossings and advanced fishing technology. The incomplete archeological records also make it difficult to know whether modern humans could sustain their life on a resource-poor, small oceanic island for extended periods with Paleolithic technology. We here report evidence from a limestone cave site on Okinawa Island, Japan, of successive occupation that extends back to 35,000−30,000 y ago. Well-stratified strata at the Sakitari Cave site yielded a rich assemblage of seashell artifacts, including formally shaped tools, beads, and the world’s oldest fishhooks. These are accompanied by seasonally exploited food residue. The persistent occupation on this relatively small, geographically isolated island, as well as the appearance of Paleolithic sites on nearby islands by 30,000 y ago, suggest wider distribution of successful maritime adaptations than previously recognized, spanning the lower to midlatitude areas in the western Pacific coastal region.

Fishing in life and death: Pleistocene fish-hooks from a burial context on Alor Island, Indonesia

“…Circular rotating hooks are found in archaeological contexts in Australia (Attenbrow 2010), throughout Oceania (Anell 1955;Reinman 1967;Kirch 1985;Allen 1996; Burley Shutler 2007;Szabó 2007), in Japan (Fujita et al 2016), Arabia (Santini 1987), along the California coast and islands (Rick et al 2002), in the islands of Baja California, Mexico (Fujita 2014), Chile (Llagostera 1992) and Ecuador (Meggers & Evans 1962;Bearéz et al 2012) (see OSM, Figure S3). Santini (1987) comments on how similar the rotating hooks from burial RH-10 in the Qurum area of Oman are to those in the Indo-Pacific region.…”

“…The majority of early prehistoric fish-hooks from around the world derive from habitation contexts. The oldest example comes from Japan, where a single-piece, rotating hook was recently found on Okinawa Island in a stratigraphic layer bracketed by AMS dates of c. 23 000 cal BP and 20 000 cal BP (Fujita et al 2016). Single-piece, shell fish-hooks have been found in Timor-Leste, where one from Lene Hara Cave has been directly AMS dated to c. 11 000 cal BP (O'Connor et al 2011).…”

Fladmark + 40: What Have We Learned about a Potential Pacific Coast Peopling of the Americas?

“…After about 50,000 years ago, evidence for seafaring and island colonization around the Pacific Rim increases dramatically, with multiple voyaging episodes that took humans across salt water gaps approaching or surpassing 100 km—through Wallacea to Australia and New Guinea (O'Connell and Allen 2012; O'Connor et al 2011), New Ireland and the Solomon Islands (Allen et al 1989; Wickler and Spriggs 1988), Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands (Fujita et al 2016; Matsu'ura 1996; Takamiya et al 2019), and to Honshu in Japan (Ikeya 2015). Most of these Pleistocene voyagers traversed relatively warm tropical or subtropical waters, but they risked significant potential dangers from storms and tsunamis, as well as venturing into unknown waters and lands.…”

Toward a Global Classification of Coastal Anthromes

“…Migration routes reconstructed from mitochondrial DNA indicate that early humans migrated from East Africa east along the Indian Ocean coast into southeast Asia and Australasia~65 kya [11]. Evidence of seafaring peoples appears after~50 kya, and evidence of pelagic fishing-"advanced maritime adaptation", including fishhooks-after~42 kya [12,13]. New findings from western Canada suggest that the first human migration into the Americas~14 kya must have followed a coastal route, not the inland passage previously thought [14].…”