Jōmon period


The Jōmon period is the time in Japanese prehistory, traditionally dated between 14,000–300 BCE, recently refined to about 1000 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. 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 it 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 East Asia and the world.
The Jōmon period was rich in tools and jewellery made from bone, stone, shell and antler; pottery figurines and vessels; and lacquerware. It is often compared to pre-Columbian cultures of the North American Pacific Northwest and especially to the Valdivia culture in Ecuador because in these settings cultural complexity developed within a primarily hunting-gathering context with limited use of horticulture.

Chronology

The very long, approximately 14,000 year Jōmon period is conventionally divided into several phases: Incipient, Initial, Early, Middle, Late, and Final, with each phase progressively shorter than the prior phase. The fact that this entire period is given the same name by archaeologists should not be taken to mean that there was not considerable regional and temporal diversity; the time between the earliest Jōmon pottery and that of the more well-known Middle Jōmon period is about twice as long as the span separating the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza from the 21st century.
Dating of the Jōmon sub-phases is based primarily upon ceramic typology, and to a lesser extent radiocarbon dating.
Recent findings have refined the final phase of the Jōmon period to 1,000 BCE. The Yayoi period started between 1,000 and 800 BCE according to radio-carbon evidence.

Incipient and Initial Jōmon ()

Traces of Paleolithic culture, mainly stone tools, occur in Japan from around onwards. The earliest "Incipient Jōmon" phase began while Japan was still linked to continental Asia as a narrow peninsula. As the glaciers melted following the end of the last glacial period, sea levels rose, separating the Japanese archipelago from the Asian mainland; the closest point about from the Korean Peninsula is near enough to be intermittently influenced by continental developments, but far enough removed for the peoples of the Japanese islands to develop independently. In addition, Luzon, Taiwan, Ryukyu, and Kyushu constitute a continuous chain of islands, connecting the Jōmon with maritime Southeast Asia.
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 beeches, buckeyes, chestnuts, and oaks 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 middens that are now prized sources of information for archaeologists. Other food sources meriting special mention include Sika deer, wild boar, 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 central and northern Honshu, but Jōmon sites range from Hokkaido to the Ryukyu Islands.

Earliest pottery

The earliest pottery in Japan was made at or before the start of the Incipient Jōmon period. Small fragments, dated to were found at the Odai Yamamoto I site in 1998. Pottery of roughly the same age was subsequently found at other sites such as Kamikuroiwa and Fukui Cave.
Archaeologist Junko Habu claims "he majority of Japanese scholars believed, and still believe, that pottery production was first invented in mainland Asia and subsequently introduced into the Japanese archipelago." This seems to be confirmed by recent archaeology. As of now, the earliest pottery vessels in the world date back to and were discovered in Xianren Cave in Jiangxi, China. The pottery may have been used as cookware. Other early pottery vessels include those excavated from the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China, dated from, and at present it appears that pottery emerged at roughly the same time in Japan, and in the Amur River basin of the Russian Far East.
The first Jōmon pottery is characterized by the cord-marking that gives the period its name and has now been found in large numbers of sites. The pottery of the period has been classified by archaeologists into some 70 styles, with many more local varieties of the styles. 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 10–50 cm high that are assumed to have been used for boiling food and, perhaps, storing it beforehand. They belonged to hunter-gatherers 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 surface.
The manufacture of pottery typically implies some form of sedentary life because pottery is heavy, bulky, and fragile and thus generally unusable for hunter-gatherers. However, this does not seem to have been the case with the first Jōmon people, who perhaps numbered over the whole archipelago. It seems that food sources were so abundant in the natural environment of the Japanese islands that it could support fairly large, semi-sedentary populations. The Jōmon people used chipped stone tools, ground stone tools, traps, and bows, and were evidently skillful coastal and deep-water fishermen.

Early agriculture

The degree to which horticulture or small-scale agriculture was practiced by Jōmon people is debated. The hunter-gatherer conceptualization of the Jōmon period culture is part of scientific romanticized narratives. There is evidence to suggest that arboriculture was practiced in the form of tending groves of lacquer and nut producing trees, as well as soybean, bottle gourd, hemp, Perilla, adzuki, among others. These characteristics place them somewhere in between hunting-gathering and agriculture.
An apparently domesticated variety of peach appeared very early at Jōmon sites in 6700–6400 BP. This was already similar to modern cultivated forms. This domesticated type of peach was apparently brought into Japan from China. Nevertheless, in China, itself, this variety is currently attested only at a later date of 5300–4300 BP.

Population expansion

By the end of the Incipient Jōmon phase, around 8000 BCE, a semi-sedentary lifestyle apparently led to an increase in population density, so that the subsequent phase, the Initial Jōmon, exhibits some of the highest densities known for foraging populations. Genetic mapping studies by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza have shown a pattern of genetic expansion from the area of the Sea of Japan towards the rest of eastern Asia. This appears as the third principal component of genetic variation in Eurasia, which suggests geographical expansion during the early Jōmon period. These studies also suggest that the Jōmon demographic expansion could possibly have reached America along a path following the Pacific coast.

Chronological ceramic typology

Incipient Jōmon
Initial Jōmon
The Early and Middle Jōmon periods saw an explosion in population, as indicated by the number of settlements from this period. These two periods occurred during the Holocene climatic optimum, when the local climate became more humid.

Middle Jōmon (2500–1500 BCE)

Highly ornate pottery dogū figurines and vessels, such as the so-called "flame style" vessels, and lacquered wood objects remain from that time. Although the ornamentation of pottery increased over time, the ceramic fabric always remained quite coarse.
This period saw a rise in complexity in the design of pit-houses, the most commonly used method of housing at the time, with some even having stone paved floors. A study in 2015 found that this form of dwelling continued up until the Satsumon culture.

Late and Final Jōmon (1500–900/300 BCE)

After 1500 BCE, the climate cooled, and populations seem to have contracted dramatically. Comparatively few archaeological sites can be found after 1500 BCE.
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 wet rice farming 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 for around a thousand years.
Outside Hokkaido, the Final Jōmon is succeeded by a new farming culture, the Yayoi, named after an archaeological site near Tokyo.
Within Hokkaido, the Jōmon is succeeded by the Zoku-Jōmon or Epi-Jōmon period, which is in turn succeeded by the Satsumon culture around the 7th century.

Main periods

At the end of the Jōmon period the local population declined sharply. Scientists suggest that this was possibly caused because of food shortages and other environmental problems. They concluded that not all Jōmon groups suffered under these circumstances but the overall population declined.

Foundation myths

The origin myths of Japanese civilization extend back to periods now regarded as part of the Jōmon period, though they show little or no relation to the current archaeological understanding of Jōmon culture. 11 February 660 BCE is the traditional founding date of the Japanese nation by Emperor Jimmu. This version of Japanese history, however, comes from the country's first written records, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, dating from the 6th to the 8th centuries, after Japan had adopted Chinese characters.
Some elements of modern Japanese culture may date from this period and reflect the influences of a mingled migration from the northern Asian continent and the southern Pacific areas and the Jōmon peoples. Among these elements are the precursors to Shinto, some marriage customs, architectural styles, and technological developments such as lacquerware, laminated yumi, metalworking, and glass making.

Proposed origin

Overview

The relationship of Jōmon people to the modern Japanese, Ryukyuans, and Ainu is diverse and not well clarified. Morphological studies of dental variation and genetic studies suggest that the Jōmon people were of southern origin, while other studies of bacteria suggest that the Jōmon people were of possible northern origin. According to recent studies the contemporary Japanese people descended from a mixture of the ancient hunter-gatherer Jōmon and the Yayoi rice agriculturalists, and these two major ancestral groups came to Japan over different routes at different times. Recent studies however support a predominantly Yayoi ancestry for contemporary Japanese people.
The Jōmon people were not one homogenous ethnic group. According to :ja:崎谷満|Mitsuru Sakitani the Jōmon people are an admixture of two distinct haplogroups: A more ancient group from Central Asia, that were present since more than in Japan and a more recent group from Western Asia that migrated to Japan about ago.
Mark J. Hudson of Nishikyushu University posits that Japan was settled by a proto-Mongoloid population in the Pleistocene who became the Jōmon, and that their features can be seen in the Ainu and Ryukyuan people. The Jōmon share several physical characteristics, such as relatively abundant body hair, with Europeans, but they derive from a separate lineage than modern Europeans.
According to Schmidt & Seguchi the prehistoric Jōmon people descended from a paleolithic populations of Siberia. Other cited scholars point out similarities between the Jōmon and various paleolithic and Bronze Age Siberians. There were likely multiple migrations into ancient Japan.

Genetics

Recent Y chromosome haplotype testing has led to the hypothesis that male haplogroups D-M55 and C1a1, which have been found in different percentages of samples of modern Japanese, Ryukyuan, and Ainu population, may reflect patrilineal descent from members of pre-Jōmon and Jōmon period of the Japanese Archipelago. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of Jōmon skeletons from Hokkaido, Okinawa Island and Tōhoku region indicates that haplogroups N9b and M7a may reflect maternal Jōmon contribution to the modern Japanese mtDNA pool. In another study of ancient DNA published by the same authors in 2011, both the control and coding regions of mtDNA recovered from Jōmon skeletons excavated from the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaido, were analyzed in detail, and 54 mtDNA samples were confidently assigned to relevant haplogroups. Haplogroups N9b, D4h2, G1b, and M7a were observed in these individuals. According to 2013 study, there was mtDNA sub-haplogroups inter-regional heterogeneity within the Jōmon people, specifically between studied Kantō, Hokkaido and Tōhoku Jōmon. According to 2011 study all major East Asian mtDNA lineages expanded before 10,000 YBP, except for two Japanese lineages D4b2b1 and M7a1a which population expanded around 7000 YBP unequivocally during the Jōmon Period, thousands of years before intensive agriculture which imply that the use of abundant uncultivated food resources was the reason for population expansion and not agriculture.
A study about ancient Jomon aDNA from Sanganji shell mound in Tōhoku region in 2017, estimates that the modern mainland Japanese population probably inherit less than 20% of their DNA from Jōmon peoples' genomes. A genome research shows that modern Japanese do not have much Jōmon ancestry at all. Nuclear genome analysis of Jōmon samples and modern Japanese samples show strong differences. Another recent estimate suggests about 10% Jōmon ancestry in modern Japanese.

Gallery

Footnotes