Product Code Database
In Japanese history, the lead=yes is the time between , during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. Their ancestors migrated from Northeast Asia, Korean Peninsula, China, and Southeast Asia. Their civilization is divided into six distinct phases. They eventually admixed with the Yayoi people.
The Jōmon period was rich in tools and jewelry made from bone, stone, shell and antler; pottery figurines and vessels; and lacquerware. Jōmon pottery is noted for being decorated by having cords pressed into the wet outside of the pottery. Similar cultures developed in pre-Columbian cultures of the North American Pacific Northwest and especially the Valdivia culture in Ecuador because in these settings cultural complexity developed within a primarily hunting-gathering context with limited use of horticulture.
Recent findings have refined the final phase of the Jōmon period to 300 BCE. The Yayoi period started between 500 and 300 BCE according to radio-carbon evidence, while Yayoi styled pottery was found in a Jōmon site in northern Kyushu in 800 BC.
The Japanese archipelago can be divided into 3 regions for which the chronology of the Jōmon period or its subsequent period are applied differently: Honshu and Kyushu, Okinawa and the Ryukyu Isles, and Hokkaido and Northern Tohōku. In Okinawa and the Ryukyu Isles, the Jōmon period does not apply as the Jōmon people were mostly absent from these places. Instead, common chronology for the area uses the Shellmidden Period, or the Sakishima Prehistoric Period specifically for the island. As for Hokkaido and Northern Tohoku, the Jōmon people were replaced not by the Yayoi people like in most of Japan, such as central and southern Honshu, but by the related people of the Zoku-Jomon which ushered in the Zoku-Jōmon Period unique to the North.
The modern-day Japanese population carries approximately 30% paternal ancestry from the Jōmon. This is far higher than the maternal Jōmon contribution of around 15%, and autosomal contribution of 10% to the Japanese population. This imbalanced inheritance has been referred to as the "admixture paradox", and is thought to hold clues as to how the admixture between the Jōmon and took place. According to the Jōmon people are an admixture of several Paleolithic populations. He suggests that Y-chromosome haplogroups C1a1 and D-M55 are two of the Jōmon lineages. Recent studies suggest that D-M55 became dominant during the late Jōmon period, shortly before the arrival of the Yayoi, suggesting a population boom and bust. The maternal Haplogroup M7a, N9b, and G1b have been identified from ancient Jōmon specimens.
The Jōmon period population of Hokkaido consisted of two distinctive populations which later merged to form the proto-Ainu people in northern Hokkaido. The Ainu language can be connected to an "Okhotsk culture component" which spread southwards. They further concluded that the "dual structure theory" regarding the population history of Japan must be revised and that the Jōmon people had more diversity than originally suggested.
The prehistoric Jōmon people descended from diverse paleolithic populations with multiple migrations into Jōmon-period Japan. They concluded: "In this respect, the biological identity of the Jōmon is heterogeneous, and it may be indicative of diverse peoples who possibly belonged to a common culture, known as the Jōmon". The modern Japanese people descended from three primary group: hunter-gatherers who arrived in Japan 15,000 BCE in the Jōmon era, farmers starting around 900 BCEwhich introduced small-scale farming to the Jōmon and eventually leading to the Yayoi period, and 300-700 CE during the Kofun period.
A 2015 study found specific gene Allele, related to facial structure and features among some Ainu individuals, which largely descended from local Hokkaido Jōmon groups. These alleles are typically associated with Europeans but absent from other East Asians (including Japanese people), which suggests geneflow from a currently unidentified source population into the Jōmon period population of Hokkaido. Although these specific alleles can explain the unusual physical appearance of certain Ainu individuals, compared to other Northeast Asians, the exact origin of these alleles remains unknown. Matsumura et. al (2019), however, states that these Phenotype were shared by prehistoric south Chinese and Southeast Asian peoples.
Full Genome analysis in 2020 and 2021 revealed further information regarding the origin of the Jōmon peoples. The genetic results suggest early admixture between different groups in Japan already during the Paleolithic, followed by constant geneflow from coastal East Asian groups, resulting in a heterogeneous population which then homogenized until the arrival of the Yayoi people. Geneflow from Northeast Asia during the Jōmon period is associated with the C1a1 and C2 lineages, geneflow from the Tibetan Plateau and Southern China is associated with the D1a2a (previously D1b) and D1a1 (previously D1a) lineages. Gene flow from ancient Siberia into the northern Jōmon people of Hokkaido was also detected, with later geneflow from Hokkaido into parts of northern Honshu (Tohoku). The lineages K and F are suggested to have been presented during the early Jōmon period but got replaced by C and D. The analysis of a Jōmon sample (Ikawazu shell-mound, Tahara, Japan) and an ancient sample from the Tibetan Plateau (Chokhopani, China) found only partially shared ancestry, pointing towards a "positive genetic bottleneck" regarding the spread of haplogroup D from ancient "East Asian Highlanders" (related to modern day Tujia people, Yao people, and Tibetan people, as well as Tripuri people). The genetic evidence suggests that an East Asian source population, near the Himalayan mountain range, contributed ancestry to the Jōmon period population of Japan, and less to ancient Southeast Asians. This points to an inland migration through southern or central China towards Japan during the Paleolithic. Another ancestry component seem to have arrived from Siberia into Hokkaido. Archeological and biological evidence link the southern Jōmon culture of Kyushu, Shikoku and parts of Honshu to cultures of southern China and Northeast India. A common culture, known as the "broadleafed evergreen forest culture", ranged from southwestern Japan through southern China towards Northeast India and southern Tibet, and was characterized by the cultivation of Azuki beans.
Some linguists suggest that the Japonic languages were already present within the Japanese archipelago and coastal Korea, before the Yayoi period, and can be linked to one of the Jōmon populations of southwestern Japan, rather than the later Yayoi or Kofun period period rice-agriculturalists. Japonic-speakers then expanded during the Yayoi period, assimilating the newcomers, adopting rice-agriculture, and fusing mainland Asian technologies with local traditions.
Linguistics research based on specific Austronesian vocabulary loaned into the core vocabulary of (Insular) Japanese indicates Austronesian peoples were in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period. These Austronesian-speakers arrived in Japan during the Jōmon period and prior to the arrival of Yayoi period migrants, associated with the spread of Japonic languages. These Austronesian-speakers were subsequently assimilated into the Japanese ethnicity. Evidence for non-Ainuic, non-Austronesian, and non-Korean Loanword are found among Insular Japonic languages, and probably derived from unknown and extinct Jōmon languages.
Within the archipelago, the vegetation was transformed by the end of the Ice Age. In southwestern Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, broadleaf evergreen trees dominated the forests, whereas broadleaf deciduous trees and conifers were common in northeastern Honshu and southern Hokkaido. Many native tree species, such as , Aesculus, , and produced edible nuts and acorns. These provided substantial sources of food for both humans and animals.
In the northeast, the plentiful marine life carried south by the Oyashio Current, especially salmon, was another major food source. Settlements along both the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean subsisted on immense amounts of shellfish, leaving distinctive (mounds of discarded shells and other refuse) that are now prized sources of information for archaeologists. Other food sources meriting special mention include Sika deer, wild boar (with possible wild-pig management), wild plants such as yam-like tubers, and freshwater fish. Supported by the highly productive deciduous forests and an abundance of seafood, the population was concentrated in Honshu and Kyushu, but Jōmon sites range from Hokkaido to the Ryukyu Islands.
An apparently domesticated variety of peach appeared very early at Jōmon sites in 6700–6400 BP (4700–4400 BCE). This was already similar to modern cultivated forms. This domesticated type of peach was apparently brought into Japan from China. Although the domestication of wild peaches started in China long before this period, a variety closest to our modern peaches is currently attested in China itself only at a later date of 5300–4300 BP.
Evidence of plant domestication by the Jōmon people came from a genomic study of the adzuki bean. All present-day adzuki cultivars descended from the wild adzuki in eastern Japan, at about 3000–5000 BP. Mutations conferring key domestication syndromes also had a single origin in Japan. These mutations originated and continued to increase in frequency since about 10,000 BP, suggesting that domestication syndromes were being selected much earlier than clear archaeological traces of large-scale cultivation.
This period saw a rise in complexity in the design of , the most commonly used method of housing at the time, with some even having paved stone floors. A study in 2015 found that this form of dwelling continued up until the Satsumon culture. Using archaeological data on pollen count, this phase is the warmest of all the phases. By the end of this phase the warm climate starts to enter a cooling trend.
The Japanese chestnut, Castanea crenata, becomes essential, not only as a nut bearing tree, but also because it was extremely durable in wet conditions and became the most used timber for building houses during the Late Jōmon phase.
During the Final Jōmon period, a slow shift was taking place in western Japan: steadily increasing contact with the Korean Peninsula eventually led to the establishment of Korean-type settlements in western Kyushu, beginning around 900 BCE. The settlers brought with them new technologies such as Paddy field and bronze and iron metallurgy, as well as new pottery styles similar to those of the Mumun pottery period. The settlements of these new arrivals seem to have coexisted with those of the Jōmon and Yayoi period for around a thousand years.
Outside Hokkaido, the Final Jōmon is succeeded by a new farming culture, the Yayoi period (c. 300 BCE – AD 300), named after an archaeological site near Tokyo. Within Hokkaido, the Jōmon is succeeded by the Okhotsk culture and Zoku-Jōmon (post-Jōmon) or Epi-Jōmon culture, which later replaced or merged with the Satsumon culture around the 7th century.
The name "cord-marked" was first applied by the American zoologist and orientalist Edward S. Morse, who discovered sherds of pottery in 1877 and subsequently translated "straw-rope pattern" into Japanese as Jōmon. The pottery style characteristic of the first phases of Jōmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay and is generally accepted to be among the oldest in the world. It has now been found in a large number of sites. The pottery of the period has been classified by archaeologists into some 70 styles, with many more local varieties of style. The antiquity of Jōmon pottery was first identified after World War II, through radiocarbon dating methods. The earliest vessels were mostly smallish round-bottomed bowls high that are assumed to have been used for boiling food and, perhaps, storing it beforehand. They belonged to and the size of the vessels may have been limited by a need for portability. As later bowls increase in size, this is taken to be a sign of an increasingly settled pattern of living. These types continued to develop, with increasingly elaborate patterns of decoration, undulating rims, and flat bottoms so that they could stand on a flat surface.
The manufacture of pottery typically implies some form of sedentism because pottery is heavy, bulky, and fragile and thus unsuitable for fully nomadic people. It seems that food sources were so abundant in the natural environment of the Japanese islands that they could support fairly large, semi-sedentary populations. The Jōmon people used lithic reduction, ground stone tools, traps, and bows. They made tools and jewelry from bone, stone, shell and antler; and were evidently skillful coastal and deep-water fishers.
Late Jōmon (2470–1250 BCE)
Some elements of modern Japanese culture may date from the period and reflect the influences of a mingled migration from the northern Asian continent and the southern Pacific areas and the local Jōmon peoples. Among those elements are the precursors to Shinto, architectural styles, and technological developments such as lacquerware, laminated bows called yumi, and metalworking.
|
|
