In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific [Hardcover]

Jon Turk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2005

The thrilling account of an extraordinary journey
in the tradition of Kon-Tiki

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

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Recounting his two-year, 3,000-mile kayak voyage from Japan's bamboo forests to the tundra of Siberia and Alaska, Turk introduces strong archeological and 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 and provides insight into the question of why they did it. Both fascinating adventure and riveting prehistory, In the Wake of the Jomon is destined to become a classic.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jon Turk, author of Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled, is a scientist and textbook author by vocation. He has paddled around Cape Horn, across the Northwest Passage, and in high-latitude oceans around the world..

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: International Marine/McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071449027
• ISBN-13: 978-0071449021
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,113,002 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I received my Ph.D. in chemistry in 1971 but realized that I would ooze into insanity if I spent my life in a laboratory. So I tried carpentry, commercial fishing, chicken farming, horse logging, and finally, writing. To keep the juices flowing, I have kayaked across the North Pacific and around Cape Horn, mountain biked through the Gobi desert, made first climbing ascents of big walls on Baffin island, and first ski descents all over the world. My two-year voyage around the North Pacific Rim was named by Paddler Magazine as one of the ten greatest sea kayaking expeditions of all times.
My latest book, "The Raven's Gift" explores the strangest journey I ever took, into the realm of the spiritual. I stood naked, balancing on one leg, while Moolynaut, a 100 year old Siberian shaman chanted in the ancient tongue, asking Kutcha, The Raven, to heal my broken and damaged pelvis. But first, she told me, I had to believe.
Believe in what? I wondered. "The Raven's Gift" is the answer to that question.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hair-Raising Adventure, August 11, 2005

By 

Bill Marsano (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific (Hardcover)

By Bill Marsano. "In the Wake of the Jomon" starts poorly--too much prattle. In 1996 a couple of collegians frolicking in/near/around Kennewick, Washington discovered the skull of a fellow soon to be called Kennewick Man. He was a Jomon, one of a Stone Age tribe from 9,500 to 20,000 years ago that had settled in, of all places, Japan. How came he to Washington? Turk thinks it possible he came not by the Bering Land Bridge but by boat. The Land Bridge explanation for early immigrations is, it seems, a little too simple. Fair enough--we need this background. The irksome part is the relentless blue-skying about WHY. Were the Jomon fleeing hunger or enemies? Misfortune or mayhem? Or were they (drumroll, please!) fired by man's inborn spirit of adventure?

I can put up with a certain amount of this but not too much, which is what Turk has on offer. So much so that toward the end, when he actually produces something more interesting on the subject, I almost missed it, having long since become used to skimming.

But all right--that's the worst of it, and not really so terrible, just an irritant that made me want to yell "Shut up and paddle!" every so often. When Turk gets the show on the road he begins producing a very fine book. It follows the old Kon-Tiki routine, and a good one it is: tracing the presumed route to turn speculation into plausibility. It offers many possibilities and he makes the most of them.

Turk plans to sail from northeastern Japan to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. His is no National Geographic expedition, where suffering means only having to load your own film. He has three tiny Wind Riders (plastic trimarans) donated by the manufacturer, some Gore-Tex, some Polartec. He's got his skillful accomplice Franz and a Russian translator, hired over the internet, who proves to speak almost no English and whose experience of water is confined to bathtubs. He cracks and splits after a week.

I don't want to spoil this adventure but must give a few details beyond the murderous shear waves and the killer surf and the whirlpool so wide Turk didn't recognize what it was until he was in it. So: Only a third of the way along, safety and sanity dictate quitting and returning next year. Round Two is much the best part. Now Turk sets out with his wife, Chris, some Prijon Kodiak kayaks and, best of all, a translator who speaks more than one language. This is Mischa, an unlikely but utterly wonderful hero. He joins the expedition knowing that survival at sea is unlikely (he too has no boating experience) but that death ashore is certain: His stressful and ulcerous office job will kill him, literally, unless he escapes to what he calls "the wild nature."

Putting his ego in a shoebox, Turk lets Mischa have the stage, for it is Mischa who earns it, who won't give up; when even Turk knows it's senseless to go on, Mischa simply won't be stopped. "Labor and defend," he cries, loosely translating an old Soviet slogan while launching into nightmare. "We must paddle to Alaska by our own hands," he reminds whenever Turk feels daunted. Turk's generosity here is admirable, and so is his writing skill: He brings all this alive and into focus so that you almost watch this book as you read it. (It would make a fine movie on the order of "Dersu Uzala.")

Turk and Mischa become boon companions as they meet and master the usual obstructions: filthy weather, stiff-necked officialdom, short rations, incessant discomfort and worse. They also meet and are helped (once being pulled from the surf by a tank) by a wonderfully odd assortment of people who live in lonely privation on the miserable shores farthest-east Russia, but who somehow understand and welcome explorers in any language. This is a book you won't lend out.--Bill Marsano is an award-winning writer and editor, and a marginally competent kayaker to boot.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not much about Jomon culture, August 7, 2005

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific (Hardcover)

I was rather disappointed in this book, but then I'm not much into high adventure, either. The book is more of a journal of one man's quest to experience the realities of the Eastward quest of the early Americans during the last of the Ice Ages. While I admit the book has many exciting moments that will appeal to those who enjoy risky adventures, I don't think those of us who hoped to learn more about the Joman culture and about it's possible peopling of the Americas.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars North Pacific paddling, October 1, 2005

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific (Hardcover)

Rebeccasreads highly recommends IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON for those armchair travellers who love to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors in modern treks.

In 1996 a 9,500-year-old skeleton, Kennewick Man, 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.

I first got on board with Jon Turk as he paddled around this blue marble & its COLD OCEANS. Now IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON, we follow a specific route historians say an ancient people in pre-historic Japan took in open rafts or canoes, over the course of generations around the northern Pacific Rim, up modernday Russia, over the Bering Sea, along the Alaskan archipelago & south into America.

Always filled with intimate details of the characteristics of the sea, the absurdity & 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.