[LINK] "Japanese kayaker hopes to show Kennewick Man could have traveled by boat"

[rfmcdonald]

Jon Trumbo's Tri-City Herald article chronicling a Japanese enthusiast's efforts to document the possibility of prehistoric migration between Japan and the United States, inspired by the controversial Paleo-Indian remains of Kennewick Man and claims of Jomon/proto-Ainu influence across the Pacific, is an interesting artifact.

(Myself I suspect that most migrations that took place between five and ten thousand years ago aren't at all likely to ever be connected to surmised cultures, but hey.)

By week's end, Ryota Yamada hopes to slip his sea kayak gently into the Columbia River at Clover Island, embarking on the first leg of a 10,000-mile adventure to Japan.

The retired scientist who did nanotechnological research intends to paddle downriver to the ocean, then via the Inland Passage north to Alaska, and eventually across the Bering Strait to the Asian continent.

It will take him four summers, but if he succeeds in reaching his homeland, Yamada said, he will have shown that Kennewick Man could have made his way by boat 9,300 years ago from Japan to North America.

"That is my main purpose," he said Monday from his temporary camp on Clover Island in downtown Kennewick.

The 42-year-old Japanese native who lives near Tokyo said the story of Kennewick Man, whose skeletal remains were found on the shores of the Columbia River near Kennewick in July 1996, inspired him to attempt the adventure of a lifetime.

[. . .]

Kennewick Man's bones, which are being held for research at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle, are controversial.

While the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Nation believe Kennewick Man is one of their ancestors, researchers believe the ancient bones are not Native American in origin, but may be genetically linked to the Ainu people, who have lived in Japan for thousands of years and appear to have a genetic link to Northern Europe.

A professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, C. Loring Brace, told the Herald in a 2006 interview that Kennewick Man's heritage likely connected with the Ainu of Japan, or the Jomon people, who were ancestors of the Ainu.

[. . .]

Yamada said he has been collecting the necessary equipment for his trip since arriving in Washington. He used a rental car to go to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he purchased a new sea kayak that is about 20 feet long and weighs barely 20 pounds.

It will take Yamada about four summers to complete the journey, paddling about 2,500 miles on each leg. He expects to get as far as Whitehorse in British Columbia this summer, including a side trip of about 50 miles up the Yukon River.