Abstract
Prehistoric peoples who lived in the Ryūkyū Archipelago actively traveled between neighboring islands that were mutually visible, but not between islands that cannot be seen from each other. In cases where an island was only visible from one direction, these early voyagers showed little volition to travel to the more distant island. For example, on the southwestern tip of the Ryūkyū Archipelago Taiwan is visible from the Yaeyama Islands, but not vice versa, and there was little interaction between these islands until the end of prehistoric times. This means that visibility was an essential condition for sailing between islands, at least initially. Later, however, certain cultural differences and similarities between island groups that were caused by geographic factors also influenced people’s decisions about whether to initiate or continue mutual relations. For example, within the coral areas or non-coral areas continuing cultural interaction was easily perpetuated, but between coral areas and non-coral areas interaction was often more difficult to preserve, even though these peoples may have had some initial knowledge of each other. The former case has been observed both in relations within the Ryūkyū Archipelago and the relations between Taiwan and Southeast China, while the latter has been observed in relations between Taiwan and the Yaeyama Islands. In this way, the Ryūkyū Archipelago was relatively isolated from Taiwan and the various cultural resources connected with it. After the eleventh century this situation changed when Yaeyama’s relative cultural isolation was overcome by Japanese and Chinese economic imperatives in the region.
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Notes
- 1.
The broken tip of a Chinquapin boat was found at the Mēbaru Site on mainland Okinawa. Calibrated radio carbon dates for this deposit are 2120–2080 and 2050–1945 BC (Tina 1999).
- 2.
The earliest evidence of rice, broomcorn and foxtail millet in Taiwan dates to about 5000 BP (Tsang et al. 2017: 1–10).
- 3.
Shell beads have been found at two sites in Taiwan, the Nan-Kuan-Li Site and the Nan-Kuan-Li East Site, though the author has not seen them personally. Similar shell beads from Strombusluhuanus have been found in E-luanbiin, in southern Taiwan.
- 4.
To date, no human remains from 3300 to 2800 BC have been found in the Yaeyama Islands or on Miyako Island.
- 5.
Axes and adzes made from Tridacna shell are the most characteristic artifacts of the Non-Pottery Culture on Miyako Island, where the oldest examples of this culture have been found. Dr. Kaishi Yamagiwa has suggested that these shell tools were first created in the Miyako Islands as a result of environmental adaptation (Yamagiwa 2017: 19–34).
- 6.
Based on her excavations of the Arafu Site in the eastern part of Miyako Island, Professor Tomoko Egami has suggested that the people who practiced stone-boiling cooking may have arrived on Miyako Island via a route that did not touch on the Yaeyama Islands (Egami 2017: 169–185). Dr. Yamagiwa further notes that the mutual independence between the people of the Yaeyama Islands and Miyako Island continued throughout the period associated with the Non-Pottery Culture (Yamagiwa 2015: 153–170).
- 7.
The Yayoi Culture is a Neolithic culture of Japan that began around 2900 BP and ended around the third century AD. It was initiated by a series of migrations from the southern Korean peninsula to Northern Kyūshū, when societies consisting of immigrants and natives established a culture based on wet-rice cultivation that drew upon the Huan-he Civilization (黄河文明). The result was the first hierarchically divided society based on agriculture. It also included the first priest officials.
- 8.
Tapenkeng Culture is thought to have emerged around 6500 BP (Huang 1974).
- 9.
The distance between Jinmen and Penghu is 145 kilometers, while that between Penghu and the Taiwan mainland is 44 kilometers.
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Kinoshita, N. (2019). Prehistoric Ryūkyūan Seafaring: A Cultural and Environmental Perspective. In: Wu, C., Rolett, B. (eds) Prehistoric Maritime Cultures and Seafaring in East Asia. The Archaeology of Asia-Pacific Navigation, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9256-7_17
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