Jomon Period

Jomon period (Japanese: 縄文時代, Jōmon jidai) is the prehistoric archaeological epoch of the Japanese archipelago spanning more than twelve millennia from the terminal Pleistocene (circa 14,500 BCE / 16,500 cal BP) through the first millennium BCE (circa 900–300 BCE, depending on regional transition to the wet-rice Yayoi culture). The term Jōmon—literally "cord-marked" or "cord-pattern"—was coined in 1877 by the American zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse to describe the twisted-fiber impressions rolled onto the exterior of prehistoric pottery excavated from the Omori Shell Mounds in Tokyo. Globally, the Jomon cultural sequence demonstrates that complex ceramic technology, lacquerware (urushi), monumental timber architecture, pit-house villages, and ritual figurines (dogū) did not require an agrarian cereal economy; instead, Jomon communities sustained multi-generational sedentism for over 10,000 years as affluent hunter-gatherer-fishers exploiting temperate deciduous forest nuts, marine mammals, salmonid runs, and coastal estuarine shellfish.

Because the Japanese archipelago stretches over 3,000 kilometers from subarctic Hokkaido to subtropical Okinawa, archaeologists subdivide the Jomon sequence into six standardized chronological phases based on ceramic typology and AMS radiocarbon dating of charred food crusts:

Alongside Late Pleistocene cave vessels from southern China (Xianrendong and Yuchanyan), Incipient Jomon sherds recovered from Odai Yamamoto I in Aomori Prefecture (~16,500 cal BP / 14,500 BCE) and Fukui Cave in Nagasaki rank among the oldest ceramic vessels in human history. Gas chromatography–combustion–isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS) of carbonized organic residues adhering to Incipient Jomon pots (Craig et al., 2013) revealed high concentrations of ω-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids and isoprenoid fatty acids (phytanic and pristanic acids) diagnostic of thermally processed marine and anadromous aquatic organisms, particularly salmonids and marine mammals. These findings demonstrate that Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers invented durable clay cooking pots primarily to render fish oils, boil seasonal salmon harvests, and leach bitter hydrolyzable tannins from acorns (Quercus) and horse chestnuts (Aesculus turbinata) via prolonged simmering and water-logged storage pits.

The sheer organizational scale of Early-to-Middle Jomon sedentism is exemplified by the Sannai-Maruyama site in Aomori Prefecture (~3,900–2,300 BCE), a 40-hectare village continuously inhabited for 1,600 years. Excavations at Sannai-Maruyama uncovered over 700 semi-subterranean pit houses, raised-floor storage granaries, paved roadways, adult cemetery rows lined with oval burial pits, infant jar burials, and a monumental six-post timber tower constructed from six massive Japanese chestnut (Castanea crenata) tree trunks each measuring 1 meter in diameter and set into 2-meter-deep postholes at exact 4.2-meter intervals.

Palynological and archaeobotanical DNA analyses at Sannai-Maruyama and concurrent sites reveal that Jomon societies practiced systematic arboriculture and niche construction rather than passive foraging:

• Chestnut and Lacquer Tree Silviculture: Pollen cores document an abrupt shift from mixed beech (Fagus crenata) forest to near-monoculture stands of Castanea crenata showing reduced genetic diversity indicative of clonal selection and anthropogenic fire clearing, alongside the cultivation of the non-native lacquer tree (Toxicodendron vernicifluum) for red iron-oxide and black carbon urushi lacquerware.
• Cultivated Annual Plants: Archaeobotanical flotation has recovered domesticated or semi-domesticated seeds of barnyard millet (Echinochloa esculenta), bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), perilla (Perilla frutescens), hemp (Cannabis sativa), burdock (Arctium lappa), and enlarged azuki beans (Vigna angularis) centuries before the introduction of wet-paddy Oryza sativa rice.

Jomon ritual life centered on baked-clay anthropomorphic figurines (dogū, 土偶), carved stone rods (sekibō), jadeite (hisui) beads traded over hundreds of kilometers from the Itoigawa region, and megalithic stone circles oriented toward solstice alignments. Nearly 20,000 dogū—predominantly depicting gravid female forms or figures with exaggerated "snow-goggle" eyes (shakōki-dogū)—have been excavated across eastern and northern Japan. Because over 95% of dogū are found intentionally fractured with detached limbs or heads scattered across middens and stone enclosures, archaeologists interpret them as sympathetic healing, childbirth, and regeneration effigies.

Whole-genome sequencing of ancient Jomon skeletons—including individuals from Funadomari (Rebun Island, ~3,800–3,500 cal BP), Ikawazu (~2,500 cal BP), and Sanganji (~3,000 cal BP)—has resolved the deep population history of the Japanese archipelago:

1. Deep Basal East Asian Divergence: The Jomon lineage diverged from ancestral continental East Asian populations during the Late Upper Paleolithic (~25,000–18,000 years ago), prior to the post-glacial flooding of the Tsushima and Soya Straits, remaining largely genetically isolated on the archipelago for over ten millennia.
2. Uniparental Haplogroup Signatures: Ancient Jomon individuals carry high frequencies of paternal Y-chromosome haplogroup D1a2a (D-M55) (a deep sister branch to Tibetan D1a1 and Andamanese D1b that is nearly absent in mainland East Asia) and maternal mitochondrial haplogroups N9b and M7a.
3. Tripartite Model of Modern Japanese Ancestry: Modern Japanese populations derive ~10% to 15% of their autosomal genome from the indigenous Jomon substrate (rising to ~30% in Ryukyuans and ~60–70% in the indigenous Ainu of Hokkaido), integrated with continental Yayoi wet-rice agriculturalists (~900 BCE–250 CE) and subsequent Kofun-period (~250–538 CE) East Asian migrants (Cooke et al., 2021).

1. Habu, J. (2004). Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617065
2. Craig, O. E., Saul, H., Lucquin, A., Nishida, Y., Taché, K., Clarke, L., ... & Jordan, P. D. (2013). Earliest evidence for the use of pottery. Nature, 496(7445), 351–354. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12109
3. Kanzawa-Kiriyama, H., Kryukov, K., Jinam, T. A., Hosomichi, K., Saso, A., Suwa, G., ... & Saitou, N. (2017). A partial nuclear genome of the Jomons who lived 3000 years ago in Fukushima, Japan. Journal of Human Genetics, 62(2), 213–221. https://doi.org/10.1038/jhg.2016.110
4. Cooke, N. P., Mattiangeli, V., Cassidy, L. M., Okazaki, K., Stokes, C. A., Onbe, S., ... & Bradley, D. G. (2021). Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations. Science Advances, 7(38), eabh2419. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abh2419