Jomon: Encyclopedia II - Jomon - Incipient and Initial Jomon 10000 - 4000 BC

Jomon - Incipient and Initial Jomon 10000 - 4000 BC

More stable living patterns gave rise by around 10,000 BC to a Mesolithic or, as some scholars argue, Neolithic culture. Possibly distant ancestors of the Ainu aboriginal people of modern Japan, members of the heterogeneous Jomon culture (c. 10,000-300 BC) left the clearest archaeological record.

According to archeological evidence, the Jomon people created the earliest pottery in the world, dated to the 11th millennium BC, as well as the earliest ground stone tools: "The earliest known pottery comes from Japan, and is dated to about 10,500 BC. China and Indo-China follow shortly afterwards" ("Past Worlds", The Times Atlas of Archeology). The antiquity of these potteries was first identified after the Second World War, through radiocarbon dating methods: "The earliest pottery, the linear applique type, was dated by radiocarbon methods taken on samples of carbonized material at 12500 +- 350 before present" (Prehistoric Japan, Keiji Imamura). The Jomon people were making clay figures and vessels decorated with patterns made by impressing the wet clay with braided or unbraided cord and sticks with a growing sophistication.

However, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History [[2]] states "Carbon-14 testing of the earliest known shards has yielded a production date of about 10,500 B.C., but because this date falls outside the known chronology of pottery development elsewhere in the world, such an early date is not generally accepted" which suggests there is considerable debate in archaeological and art historian circles as to whether Jomon culture pottery is indeed that old. Until there is further evidence one way or another, it should be acknowledged that the dating of Jomon pottery should be noted as controversial and not universally accepted. [[3]].

The manufacture of pottery typically implies some form of sedentary life, since pottery is highly breakable and therefore is useless to hunter-gatherers who are constantly on the move. Therefore the Jomon probably were some of the earliest sedentary or at least semi-sedentary people in the world. They used chipped stone tools, ground stone tools, traps, and bows and were probably semi-sedentary hunters-gatherers, and skillful coastal and deep-water fishermen. They practised a rudimentary form of agriculture and lived in caves and later in groups of either temporary shallow pit dwellings or above-ground houses, leaving rich kitchen middens for modern anthropological study. Because of this, the earliest forms of farming are sometimes attributed to Japan (Ingpen & Wilkinson) in 10,000 BC, two thousand years before their widespread appearance in the Middle East.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Incipient and Initial Jomon 10000 - 4000 BC", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki