Thinking about the Out of Africa phase of human migration always interests me. One thing that must be considered, relative to this experiment, is that our ancestors wouldn’t initially have know that there was any land to reach at the end of their voyage. What drove them to paddle into nothingness (if this was an accurate representation of how they traveled)? Fascinating stuff.
The Polynesian people had many ways of detecting land far beyond the horizon using ocean currents, temperatures, weather patterns, animal movements, and others which they used to island hop all the way through the Pacific Islands.
I have little doubt it was a well informed theory before they got into their vessels.
There’s still a lot of faith in a theory there. Prove that there’s an island before I’ll row with you. It’s pretty wild.