In Japanese history, the 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, the Korean Peninsula, China, and Southeast Asia. Their civilization is divided into six distinct phases. They eventually admixed with the Japonic-speaking 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.
Chronology The approximately 14,000-year Jōmon period is conventionally divided into several phases, progressively shorter: Incipient (13,750–8,500 BC), Initial (8,500–5,000 BC), Early (5,000–3,520 BC), Middle (3,520–2,470 BC), Late (2,470–1,250 BC), and Final (1,250–500 BC). 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 300 BC. The Yayoi period started between 500 and 300 BC 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.
Origin and ethnogenesis
The relationship of Jōmon people to the modern Japanese (Yamato people), Ryukyuans, and Ainu is not clear. Morphological studies of dental variation and genetic studies suggest that the Jōmon people were rather diverse, and mitochondrial DNA studies indicate the Jōmon people were closely related to modern-day East Asians. Like the Yayoi rice-agriculturalists, the Jōmon people likely came to Japan over different routes at different times and contributed to the genome of contemporary Japanese people. But overall, the ancestors of the Jōmon are believed to have come from Southeast Asia. There is also evidence of a single-wave migration by the Jōmon population to Japan, with regional differences being explained by genetic drift.
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 Yayoi cultures 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 haplogroups 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 in northern Hokkaido. The Ainu language can be connected to an "Okhotsk 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.
A 2015 study found specific gene alleles, 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 phenotypes were shared by prehistoric populations from China and Southeast Asia. Other studies suggest relative phenotypic homogeneity among different Jōmon specimens in Japan.
Full genome analyses 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 whilst geneflow from the Tibetan Plateau and Southern China is associated with the D1a2a (previously D1b) and D1a1 (previously D1a) lineages. Geneflow 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 Tibetans, 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 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 loanwords are found among Insular Japonic languages, and probably derived from unknown and extinct Jōmon languages.
Other studies suggest that the Jōmon form a clade with Ancient Northern and Southern East Asians. They diverged from Ancient East Asians around the same time as the Longlin specimen from Guangxi, China although other studies show an earlier divergence date for the latter. The Jōmon likewise diverged from Ancient East Asians much later than the basal Xingyi_EN lineage. According to Wang et al. (2025), the ancestors of Ancient East Asians were a mixture of Tianyuan-related and Xingyi_EN-related lineages. The Jōmon also exhibit a high degree of genetic homogeneity,which is attributed to "strong bottleneck and small effective population size". Additional admixture between the Jōmon and coastal East Asians is also present although there is no evidence of Austronesian-related input, for instance, in the Jōmon, including Ryukyuan Jōmon.
Incipient and Initial Jōmon ()
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 (approximately ), sea levels rose, separating the Japanese archipelago from the Asian mainland; the closest point (in Kyushu) 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. The main connection between the Japanese archipelago and Mainland Asia was through the Korean Peninsula to Kyushu and Honshu. In addition, Luzon, Taiwan, Ryukyu, and Kyushu constitute a continuous chain of islands, connecting the Jōmon with Southeast Asia, while Honshu, Hokkaido and Sakhalin connected the Jōmon with Siberia.
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. These nuts were preserved in winter, especially in the eastern part of Japan, and were stored in underground pits. The acorns of Quercus crispula contain astringent tannins and cannot be eaten as they are, but must be processed to become edible.
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 (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.
Early Jōmon (5000–3520 BC)