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The Jomon period ( Japanese: 縄文時代 jomon jidai) is the time in Japanese history from about 10,000 BC to 300 BC. On the basis of archaeological finds, it has been postulated that hominid activity in Japan may date as early as 200,000 BC, when the islands were connected to the Asian mainland. Although some scholars doubt this early date for habitation, most agree that by around 40,000 BC glaciation had reconnected the islands with the mainland. Based on archaeological evidence, they also agree that by between 35,000 BC and 30,000 BC Homo sapiens had migrated to the islands from eastern and southeastern Asia and had well-established patterns of hunting and gathering and stone toolmaking. Stone tools, inhabitation sites, and human fossil s from this period have been found throughout all the islands of Japan.
The term "Jomon" is a translation into Japanese of the English term "cord-marked." This refers to the markings made on clay vessels and figures using sticks with cords wrapped around them.
Incipient Jomon pottery (10,000-8,000 BC), the earliest pottery type in the world, Tokyo National Museum, Japan.
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 (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.
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 appearance in the Middle EastThe Middle East is a geographical and cultural area comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East is a subregion of Afr.