In the Wake of the Jomon
Jon Turk
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 International Marine
ISBN: 0071449027

Stone Age Mariners & a Voyage across the Pacific.

In 1996 a 9,500-year-old skeleton was found beside the Columbia River, galvanizing anthropologists with the possibility that prehistoric humans reached North America from Asia by crossing the ocean in small open boats.

World-class kayaker & science writer Jon Turk relates his successful attempt to re-create this perilous migration in a story that wraps an intriguing anthropological argument inside a gripping narrative about the sea, an ancient people, & the wilderness of northeast Siberia.

Recounting his two-year, 3,000-mile kayak voyage from Japan's bamboo forests to the tundra of Siberia & Alaska, Jon Turk introduces strong archeological & anthropological evidence that his expedition was not the first. He explains how the ancient Jomon people could have completed this journey 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, & provides insight into the question of why they did it.

I first got on board with Jon Turk as he paddled the Cold Oceans of South America, & In the Wake of the Jomon is just as fascinating an adventure, this time with the added flavor of following the migration of the Kennewick Man.

Always filled with intimate details of the characteristics of the sea, the absurdities & frustrations of world bureaucracies, the meeting of cultures, as well as the effort to undertake the kinds of expeditions Jon Turk favors, In The Wake Of The Jomon will cast you adrift in both history & philosophy, as well as drenching you with the thrills & spills of a dangerous & beautiful journey.

For all Readers who yearn to go down to the sea & muck about in boats, in far away places.

More from Jon Turk:
Cold Oceans
Adventures in a Kayak, Rowboat and Dogsled
(09/25/05)

Rebecca