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

Significance Moving into oceanic islands after c. 50,000 years ago was a remarkable step forward in the history of worldwide expansion of modern humans. However, the developmental process of Pleistocene maritime technology remains unclear. So far, the only secure sources of information for such discussions were the Indonesian Archipelago and northern New Guinea as steppingstones from the Asian continent to Australia. This article reports a successful maritime adaptation that extended from ∼35,000 to 13,000 years ago on a small island environment in the southern Japanese Archipelago. The new evidence demonstrates a geographically wider distribution of early maritime technology that extended north to the midlatitude areas along the western Pacific coast.