Jomon period: content
The Beginnings of Jomon (up to Incipient Jomon) - in progress
The Developments of Pottery - in progress
Occupation of space by the Jomon people - in progress
Subsistence strategies during Jomon - in progress
Everyday life of the Jomon people - in progress
The spiritual landscape and culture of the Jomon - in progress
The last stages of Jomon and the Yayoi transition - in construction
Jomon period: The Beginnings of Jomon
Text in progress
We know human occupation of Japan begun at least 30,000 years ago (see the pre- and protohistoric introduction page concerning evidence of human occupation before that [1]), and one of the characteristics of the stone tools they left behind is that they are standardized tools, something that in Europe was synonymous with Upper Palaeolithic; but, alongside those standardized blades were found polished axes which, in Europe, would only appear during the Neolithic. This is important as it illustrates well that, while there are common points between the Japanese and other ancient cultures, it is also unique in its development: some aspects evolved faster, other slower than elsewhere - in short, the transition from the Stone Age to history must be understood as a journey that was different from what happened elsewhere in the world, but still shares common traits, in particular with cultures in North-East Asia
About 15,000 years later appeared, across northeast Asia and including in Japan, a new microliths culture (the fact that it reached Japan and other islands in the region apparently simultaneously must be due to the fact that the sea level was significantly lower than now, effectively linking what are now islands with strips of firm ground; communications and/or technology transfers must have been quite rapid if the great number of specific tools that appeared and disappeared at a fast pace are anything to go by). It's the same microliths that were contained in three layers at Fukui Cave, Nagasaki Prefecture (northwest Kyushu). The lowest layer revealed little else but in the one above were also found sheds of a pottery that had been decorated with strips of clay (linear relief pottery) and, in the top one, fingernail-impressed pottery. That discovery was made in 1960; since then, similar finds have been made not only on Kyushu island, but in a large part of the Honshu as well, often containing yet other types of pottery. These sites also tell us that, contrary to what has been believed for a long time, the Jomon culture didn't first develop in Eastern Japan to then spread towards the rest of the archipelago; indeed, Kyushu was home to a certain number of early large Jomon sites. Of particular interest is the site of Kakoinohara, where the precise, careful use of space, making the most of the layout of the site, probably indicates that this was not just use temporary, but that the people living there were somewhat sedentary, even though the site dates back to prior 9,000 BC. Another clue in that direction is the great number of artefacts, including pottery, which would have made travelling more difficult. In particular, the number of pottery remains is much higher than at other sites of the same period. The secondary firing evidence on some of the vessels would suggest that the inhabitants were boiling food, a new cooking technic that would have had an impact on the diet, and therefore the survivance strategy, of the people there