The Jōmon period is the time in Prehistoric Japan from about 12,000 BC and in some cases cited as early as 14,500 BC to about 300 BC, when Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. The name "cord-marked" was first applied by the American scholar Edward S. Morse who discovered shards of pottery in 1877 and subsequently translated it into Japanese asjōmon. The pottery style characteristic of the first phases of Jōmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay. This pottery, dated to around 16,000 years ago (14,000 BC), is perhaps the oldest in the world (pottery nearly as old has been found in southern China, the Russian Far East, and Korea). The period was rich in tools and jewelry made from bone, stone, shell, and antler; pottery figurines and vessels; and lacquered wood. The Jōmon culture is often compared to pre-Columbian cultures of Pacific Northwest North America because in both regions cultural complexity developed within a primarily hunting-gathering context (with limited use of horticulture). By the end of the Incipient Jōmon phase, around 8,000 BC, a semi-sedentary lifestyle apparently led to an increase in population density, so that the subsequent phase, the Initial Jōmon, exhibits some of the highest densities known for foraging populations. Genetic mapping studies by Cavalli-Sforza have shown a pattern of genetic expansion from the area of the Sea of Japan towards the rest of eastern Asia. This appears as the third principal component of genetic variation in Eurasia, which suggests geographical expansion during the early Jōmon period. These studies also suggest that the Jōmon demographic expansion may have reached America along a path following the Pacific coast. The Ainu or the Aynu and in historical Japanese texts Ezo/Emishi/Ebisu or Ainu) are an indigenous White European people of Japan(Hokkaido, and formerly northeastern Honshu) and Russia (Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands). The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the Jōmon people, who lived in Japan from the Jōmon period. One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "The Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came". Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated in a merger of the Okhotsk culture with the Satsumon, one of the ancient archaeological cultures that are considered to have derived from the Jōmon period cultures of the Japanese Archipelago. Their economy was based on farming, as well as hunting, fishing and gathering. Full-blooded Ainu, compared to people of Yamato descent, often have lighter skin and more body hair. Many early investigators proposed a white Caucasian ancestry. Cavalli-Sforza places the Ainu in his "Northeast and East Asian" genetic cluster. In 1893, Anthropologist Arnold Henry Savage Landor described the Ainu as having deep-set eyes and an eye shape typical of Europeans, with a large and prominent browridge, large ears, hairy and prone to baldness, slightly flattened hook nose with large and broad nostrils, prominent cheek bones, large mouth and thick lips and a long region from nose to mouth and small chin region.The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kuril islands and the island of Hokkaido and Northern Honshū, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honshū and as far north as the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in what is now Cape Lopatka. The island of Hokkaido was known to the Ainu as Ainu Moshir, and was formally annexed by the Japanese at the late date of 1868, partly as a means of preventing the intrusion of the Russians, and partly for imperialist reasons. On June 6, 2008 the Japanese Diet passed a bipartisan, non-binding resolution calling upon the government to recognize the Ainu people as indigenous to Japan, and urging an end to discrimination against the group. The resolution recognised the Ainu people as "an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture". The government immediately followed with a statement acknowledging its recognition, stating, "The government would like to solemnly accept the historical fact that many Ainu were discriminated against and forced into poverty with the advancement of modernization, despite being legally equal to (Japanese) people. "The Emishi or Ebisu constituted a group of ancient white Ainu people who lived in northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region which was referred to as michi no oku in contemporary sources. The origin of the Emishi is unknown, but they have descended from the Jōmon people. The first mention of them in literature dates to 400AD, in which they are mentioned as "the hairy people" from the Chinese records. Some Emishi tribes resisted the rule of the Japanese Emperors during the late Nara and early Heian periods (7th–10th centuries AD). Scholars believe that they were natives of northern Honshū and were descendants of those who developed the Jōmon culture in that region. They have been related to the Ainu.The Emishi in northeastern Honshū relied on their horses in warfare. They developed a unique style of warfare in which horse archery and hit-and-run tactics proved very effective against the slower contemporary Japanese imperial army that mostly relied on heavy infantry. Their livelihood was based on hunting and gathering as well as on the cultivation of grains such as millet and barley. Recently, it has been thought that they practiced rice cultivation in areas where rice could be easily grown. The first major attempts to subjugate the Emishi in the 8th century were largely unsuccessful. The imperial armies, which were modeled after the mainland Chinese armies, were no match for the guerrilla tactics of the Emishi. It was the development of horse archery and the adoption of Emishi tactics by the early Japanese warriors that led to the Emishi defeat. The success of the gradual change in battle tactics came at the very end of the 8th century in the 790s under the command of the general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro. They either submitted themselves to imperial authority as fushu and ifu or migrated further north, some to Hokkaidō. By the mid-9th century, most of their land in Honshū was conquered, and they ceased to be independent. However, they continued to be influential in local politics as subjugated, though powerful, Emishi families created semi-autonomous feudal domains in the north. In the two centuries following the conquest, a few of these domains became regional states that came into conflict with the central government. By and large, they are seen as indigenous to Japan and not simply as ancestors to the Ainu, but descendants of the Jōmon. In the study of Jōmon skeletal remains dating from thousands of years ago, a direct connection with the modern Ainu was confirmed, showing a definite linkage between the two groups. This linkage however, shows that the Jōmon people were very different from modern Japanese and other modern East Asians. The physical appearance of a number of the Ainu who were first encountered by the Europeans in the 19th century were similar to Caucasians. It is thus surmised that the Jōmon also were physically unlike other East Asians. This said, physical anthropologists have found that diachronically, and geographically, the skeletal structure of the Jōmon population changed over time from southwest to northeast, paralleling the actual migration of Japanese speakers historically, so that more Jōmon traits are preserved in the north.
Πηγή: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dmon_period
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emishi
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