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The current theory on human migrations into Japan is that the original inhabitants, the Jomon people, were met about 2,500 years ago by a separate group coming mainly from the Korean Peninsula, the Yayoi people. Archaeologists have identified fewer Jomon sites from the Late Jomon Period, the era immediately before the Yayoi arrival. Global temperatures and sea levels dropped during that period, which could have made life more difficult for the hunter-gatherer Jomon people. When the Yayoi people arrived, they brought wet rice farming to Japan, which would have led to a more stable food supply for the remaining Jomon...

Measuring 12 to 13 cm per side and 1.4 cm thick, the stone, flattened with a whetstone or other tools, is shaped like an inverted triangle. While a horizontal line is drawn near the top side with a black pigment, an ellipse that apparently represents an eye and lines forming eyebrows and the nose are also painted on it. Although how the stone piece was actually used remains unclear, experts said the object may have been used for religious services and other purposes in ancient times. A painting of a human body drawn with pigments at the lower part of...

The Jomon culture was mentioned in other news this month. The largest ever genetic study of native South Americans identified a sub-population in Ecuador with an unexpected link to eastern Asia. The study, published in PLOS Genetics, concluded that Asian genes had been introduced into South America sometime after 6,000 years ago -- the same time the Jomon culture was flourishing in Japan. Back in the 1960s, the renowned Smithsonian archaeologist Betty Meggers argued that similarities between the pottery of the contemporaneous Valdivia culture in Ecuador and Japan’s Jomon culture indicated that Japanese fishermen had “discovered” America about 5,000 years...

By week's end, Ryota Yamada hopes to slip his sea kayak gently into the Columbia River at Clover Island, embarking on the first leg of a 10,000-mile adventure to Japan. The retired scientist who did nanotechnological research intends to paddle downriver to the ocean, then via the Inland Passage north to Alaska, and eventually across the Bering Strait to the Asian continent. It will take him four summers, but if he succeeds in reaching his homeland, Yamada said, he will have shown that Kennewick Man could have made his way by boat 9,300 years ago from Japan to North America....

Researchers have unearthed an ancient forearm bone from the Mabuni Hantabaru archeological site in Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture, believed to be from a Jomon period male roughly 169 centimeters tall -- much taller than the average for the period. The bone, measuring about 28 centimeters, is believed to be from the late Jomon period, dating back 3,000-4,000 years. The average height of males from the same period is about 158 centimeters. Takayuki Matsushita, honorary head of the Doigahama Site Anthropological Museum in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which conducted a survey of the area, said the find was unusual. "Even on a national scale,...

Researchers studying the various dialects of Japanese have concluded that all are descended from a founding language taken to the Japanese islands about 2,200 years ago. The finding sheds new light on the origin of the Japanese people, suggesting that their language is descended from that of the rice-growing farmers who arrived in Japan from the Korean Peninsula, and not from the hunter-gatherers who first inhabited the islands some 30,000 years ago. The result provides support for a wider picture, controversial among linguists, that the distribution of many language families today reflects the spread of agriculture in the distant past...

OTSU--A clay figure believed to be 13,000 years old and one of the oldest in the country, was found in an archaeological site in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, the Shiga Prefectural Association for Cultural Heritage said. The tiny figure, 3.1 centimeters in height and 14.6 grams in weight, depicts a female torso with breasts and a waistline. The figure, which was discovered at the Aidanikumahara archaeological site, is from an incipient era of the Jomon Pottery Culture, according to the association. Another female clay figure from approximately the same era was found in Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture, in 1996.

Ancient DNA recovered from 16 Jomon skeletons excavated from Funadomari site, Hokkaido, Japan was analyzed to elucidate the genealogy of the early settlers of the Japanese archipelago. Both the control and coding regions of their mitochondrial DNA were analyzed in detail, and we could securely assign 14 mtDNAs to relevant haplogroups. Haplogroups D1a, M7a, and N9b were observed in these individuals, and N9b was by far the most predominant. The fact that haplogroups N9b and M7a were observed in Hokkaido Jomons bore out the hypothesis that these haplogroups are the (pre-) Jomon contribution to the modern Japanese mtDNA pool. Moreover,...

A 3,500-year-old stone artifact from the late Jomon period (ca. 10,000 B.C.-ca. 300 B.C.) decorated with carved images of three people has been unearthed at the Chikano archaeological site in Aomori... The find is known as a stone crown because of its shape, with the upper part narrower than the bottom. It is rare for a stone artifact with drawings from the Jomon period to be discovered, and it is the first time a stone crown depicting more than one person has been found... The Chikano archaeological site is located near the Sannai-Maruyama dig--the biggest Jomon period village remains... The...

New Lapita find re-dates known Fiji settlers VITAL CLUE: The pottery shard, at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji, is thought to be the work of the Lapita people that originated near Taiwan AFP , AUCKLAND Sunday, Oct 24, 2004 A biological anthropologist excavates a skeleton after archeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu in August, holding secrets about the first humans to colonize the South Pacific. A shard of pottery showing a human face, pre-dating any other Lapita pottery in Fiji, has now been found and hailed a s a significant discovery. PHOTO: AFP...

Tantalizing clues in ancient mounds 05/04/2005 The Asahi Shimbun SAGA-Ancient mounds here may be among the nation's oldest and prove that the original owners were pretty inventive for their day. Recent excavations at the Higashimyo archeological site indicate the shell mounds date back 7,000 years-to the early Jomon Period (8000 B.C.-300 B.C.). Higashimyo has western Japan's largest such mounds. They are believed to have been created by the dumping of shells and other refuse. Remains of more than 40 baskets, hand-woven from thin strips of wood, have been found there. Experts say they may be the oldest so far discovered....

On September 19, 1997, the New York Times announced the discovery of a group of earthen mounds in northeastern Louisiana. The site, known as Watson Brake, includes 11 mounds 26 feet high linked by low ridges into an oval 916 feet long. What is remarkable about this massive complex is that it was built around 3400 B.C., more than 3,000 years before the development of farming communities in eastern North America, by hunter-gatherers, at least partly mobile, who visited the site each spring and summer to fish, hunt, and collect freshwater mussels... Social complexity cannot exist unless I it...

Jomon fishing site discovered Yomiuri Shimbun Bones unearthed near Okinoshima in Tateyama show that between about 6,500 B.C. and 7,500 B.C., dolphins were being fished off the coast of what now is part of Chiba Prefecture. As well as indicating that dolphins were being fished for about 1,000 years in the early Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.), objects found at the site gave researchers clues about the natural environment 8,000 years ago. "We found lots of valuable data, as well as learning lots about the natural environment during the early Jomon period, when the climate was gradually warming...