“In the Wake of the Jomon”
When two hikers found an 8,400- year-old skeleton on the banks of Washington’s Columbia River in 1996, anthropologists stirred with renewed debate on just how the Americas were first peopled. Speculation that Stone Age man first arrived in North America from Asia was supported with the discovery of the so- called Kennewick Man skeleton, who many believe was an ancestor of the Jomon people in southeast Asia. Montana-based scientist and writer Jon Turk thought further exploration was needed, so he embarked on a two-year, 3,000-mile kayak voyage from Japan to Siberia to Alaska. Turk’s epic tale, “In the Wake of the Jomon,” (2005, McGraw Hill) recounts that trip with a scientific, historical and cultural perspective that almost eclipses the gripping adventure of paddling a kayak across the Pacific. Turk shows that the ancient Jomon mariners could have completed the same journey in open canoes more than 10,000 years ago. Even better,Turk suggests the Jomon were actually pursuing a spiritual, even romantic quest when they set out for unknown lands.
