The prehistoric Jomon people of Japan were deep-sea fishermen. Evidence of certain deep-sea marine life in their shell middens dictates their knowledge of deep-sea fishing technology (Kidder, p. 57).



With the above in mind, it is then possible to postulate that during one of these deep-sea fishing voyages a storm arose and drove the Jomon fishermen farther out to sea into the Kurshio Current. Due to meager navigational equipment, it would have been difficult to find their way back to their homeland (Sharp, p. 38). If this was the case, the vessel or vessels would have probably been deposited on the coast of North or South America.



An argument against the above hypothesis is that although the vessel may have made it to the shore of Ecuador, it is improbable that Jomon fishermen could have survived such a long, unintentional voyage. Groot has suggested the possibility that Jomon people were blown off course by gales to the area of Melanesia. Pottery of Middle Jomon type has been found among the Papuan-speaking people living there. The distance between Japan and the Melanesian Islands is 2500 miles. Being able to survive a journey of this length would indicate that the Jomon people were capable of surviving on ocean products while on long voyages. If this was the case then it is not improbable that these people could have survived a longer voyage from Asia to America.

Archaeologist Wilhelm Solheim has proposed lately that Jomon-like Valdivia pottery of Ecuador and other pottery resembling the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay tradition has its ultimate origin in Southeast Asia.

Solheim quotes the seminal work of the late James Ford, A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man:



At about 3000 BC after a long sea voyage from the southwestern Japanese Islands, a group of fisherman landed on the coast of Ecuador. Meggers, Evans, and Estrada (1965), who have presented the evidence in support of this happening, so novel in terms of currently accepted theory about New World cultural development, have modestly suggested that perhaps this was a single boatload of fishermen, lost at sea in a storm, who were unwillingly brought to the shores of America by the North Pacific ocean current.

There is reason to suspect, however, that this might have been more in the nature of an exploring and colonizing expedition involving a number of individuals of both sexes and varied skills. Subsequent events in the Americas suggest that these people had a seafaring, exploring and colonizing tradition, similar to that fo the later Polynesians and Vikings. Solheim (1964[a]:360, 376—84) has offered statistical evidence to show that one of three sources of Malayan and Polynesian ceramic traditions was influenced from the Japanese Islands at an estimated date of 1000 to 500 BC. The extensive spread of this 'Sa-Hunh-Kalanay' tradition in the southwestern Pacific certainly implies a seafaring tradition. Most of the ceramic shapes, decorative elements, and design motifs are similar to those postulated to have spread to the Americas between 3000 and 1000 B.C.

The remarkable variety of the Valdivia ceramics suggests that more than one or two individuals, or lineages, founded and maintained this tradition. The highly selective fashion in which certain elements of the complex were spread to other parts of the Americas, also argues that specialization in this craft had already developed. Furthermore, as varied as it is the Valdivia ceramic complex does not represent the entire range of pottery manufactured at 3000 B.C. in southwestern Japan. As with the early English settlement at Jamestown in Virgina, the products manufactured corresponded to the experience and training of the craftsmen brought from the mother country (Ford 1969: 183-184).

Solheim believes based on the similarities of the Valdivia and other assemblages in decoration and form with the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay complex that Nusantao voyagers from were making infrequent visits to the west coast of the Americas starting around 3000 BCE using the Kuroshio (Japan) Current.

Originally posted by punkinworks
And a mesopotamin seal that bears a a motiff of a south east asian swamp buffalo.

The image of a water buffalo or a man with buffalo horns appears also in the iconography of the Sumerians. Indeed, we see that the water buffalo in Sumer is none other than the Southeast Asian swamp buffalo. Remains of this species have also been found at Sumerian archaeological sites.

The swamp buffalo is different than the river buffalo of India. It originates in Southeast Asia but is historically absent from India. It was however found in ancient Sri Lanka apparently brought by sea from Southeast Asia.

A little off topic but it speaks to how much the people of this part of the pacific got around