Museums to try ancestors’ sail from Taiwan to Okinawa

"It is said that from the top of the hills on Yonakuni, one can see Formosa and sometimes can even notice the lights on that island at night, so that one would think there would have been much intercourse with Formosa during the history of the islands. The commercial route is modern, however, and there has been little communication between Formosa and Yonakuni in former times. It is said that long ago the fierce natives of Formosa came and took captive some men and women on Yonakuni Island and ate them. The inhabitants of the island were, therefore, very much afraid of the Formosans and did not even date to light a fire at night lest the Formosans should see it and visit them again. There is a story that when the wind blew in the right direction, the natives of Yonakuni took long sandals of a length of two feet and threw them into the sea. When they drifted to Formosa, the [Yonagunians] thought that the Formosans, seeing them, would imagine from the size of the feet that there were very big men in that region and would refrain from exploring their country!"

(From Charles Leavenworth's account of his 1905 visit to Okinawa, "The Loochoo Islands".)

The Taiwanese cannibals never came back, so I'd say the Yonagunians' gambit worked!

https://www.google.com.au/maps/dir/Yonaguni/taipei/@24.50853...

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