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> "The project is aimed at examining what kind of boats Japanese ancestors used when they crossed the sea to travel from Taiwan" While the topic is interesting
by titanix2 10y ago
> "The project is aimed at examining what kind of boats Japanese ancestors used when they crossed the sea to travel from Taiwan"
While the topic is interesting, the wording of the article is problematic: given that formal annexion of the Ryūkyū date from 1879 and that the local people go through a process of Japanization[1] since this date, speaking of ancestors of Japanese people is more of a political statement than a scientific one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanization
- Dunan 10y agoRight; I wouldn't call them "Japanese ancestors". The Okinawans of today are descended mostly from migrants from the mainland, and even these people are not necessarily the same ones who came to the islands from Taiwan many millennia ago. (Those underwater ruins that Yonaguni is famous for almost certainly stem from those people and not from today's Okinawans. While some of them look like a city of some kind, it is just as plausible that rock was cut out of the ground to build things. I would love to know the truth behind that amazing place!)