Japan in the Paleolithic era. Japanese Pre-History

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Japan in the Paleolithic era

Introduction

Any discussion of the history of human settlement in Japan always begins with physical geography. The Japanese archipelago consists of many islands (approximately XXXX in total) and even today some 80% of the country is covered in thickly forested mountains. Physical geography - the natural barriers posed by mountains, seas, peninsulas etc - have played a large part in creating Japan's regional variations.

As students of the Japanese language, one of the things we soon learn is that areas of modern Japan such as the northern island of Hokkaido have a much briefer history of settlement by Japanese speakers than say the Kansai region around Osaka, Kyoto or Nara or the southern island of Kyushu. And over the long period of time that it took for Japanese speakers to fill the archipelago, what has become known to us as the Japanese language gradually evolved into many regional dialects. This process was accelerated, as it has been in many other countries, by:

isolation on islands, peninsulas, or from other communities by geographic barriers such as mountain ranges,

the natural limits imposed on trade and domestic migration by pre-industrial age transport technology,

the social restrictions on trade and domestic migration imposed by long periods of feudalism,

for most of Japan's history, a largely agrarian economy,

intermittent (and occasionally constant) civil war and social dislocation.

However we should also understand that this physical geography has not always been the case. Lets start at the beginning.

Approximately 18,000 years ago, Japan was not a series of islands. What we now call Japan was connected via land bridges to the Eurasian continent at several locations. The main land bridges were between the Korean peninsula and what is now known as the island of Kyushu, and between Siberia and what is now known as Hokkaido - which was connected via what what is now the island of Sakhalin. When we think about Japan today, we think of four major islands. From north to south these are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Separated from each other via straits such as Tsugaru, Simonoseki and the Seto inland sea. 18,000 years ago however, the various parts of Japan (including a great number of what are now small islands) were also connected to each other by land bridges. These land bridges enabled the gradual dispersion from continental Asia of plants, birds and later, mammals. The land bridges are also what enabled one of the last species to arrive - homo sapiens.

Until comparatively recently, archaelogists and pre-historians didn't believe that there had been human settlement in Japan during the Paleolithic era. Prior to WWII (the Pacific War in Japanese parlance), there were a number of reasons why research was limited. One of the key reasons was the usual shortages of funding. Archaelogy is a painstaking process that requires sustained research and stable budgets. There were also man-made obstacles such as the pre-war ideology of Japan. To some extent these remain - at the end of the 20th century, archeologists had still not been granted permission to study royal tombs (Tumulus) from the Yamato period. The greatest obstacle was the absence of modern techniques such as carbon dating. Technical advances such as carbon dating, together with the sustained research that has been possible since the middle of the 20th century has dramatically opened up our knowledge of the Paleolithic era in Japan.

Since the end of WWII, a wealth of artifacts and knowledge has been excavated from several thousand sites, and these sites have yielded both core tools and flake tools. (Core tools are made by chipping a stones surface, whereas flake tools involve working on a flake/shard that has been broken off a larger stone) The sites have also produced the remains of pre-historic animals similar to those found on mainland Asia. And unfortunately (but somewhat inevitably) it has also produced the "dinosaur tourism" that seems to automatically develop near the more spectacular finds. Pre-historians say that there is little doubt that many of the tools, and almost certainly the knowledge of how to make these simple tools, was brought to the islands of Japan by people moving over the land-bridges from the Asian continent.

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Period in Japan is variously dated from 30,000 to 10,000 years before present. We know virtually nothing of the language, ethnicity, religion or culture of the people who lived in Japan during this period. What we have been able to confirm is that the economy was based on hunting and gathering, that the basic technology of fire was known, and the people lived in caves or in covered pits.

No bone or horn artifacts have been found in Japan during the Paleolithic era, even though these are frequently found at sites from equivalent periods elsewhere in the world. This is understandable, what are now the islands of the Japanese archipelago were located on the periphery of continental Asia. Tools came to Japan later. It was during this period, starting from about 20,000 years before the present, that sea levels began to rise as the world's average temperatures increased. This had a very significant impact on Japan's future - the land bridge to Korea was gradually submerged, as were the other land routes. From that moment onwards, people, ideas, tools or animals would not reach Japan without a deliberate decision involving watercraft.

As elsewhere in the world, the hunter-gatherers living on what were now islands had to adapt over dozens of generations to climatic change. The rise in temperatures made Japan an archipelago, but we have to remember that this would not have impacted as much on the small clans of hunter gatherers as our imagination would believe. It is unlikely that each generation would have noticed the changes, and the small communities would not have moved large distances during their lifetimes. The impact was gradual. Animals that many generations earlier had been easily hunted gradually became scarcer, and the plant density thicker. It is likely that the expanding human population were a contributing factor to the depletion of fauna. Humans would have responded to this at local level. Examples of response would have included migration in search of better hunting grounds, the adoption of more effective hunting techniques (for example using the bow & arrow) to hunt a wider range of species, and harvesting of other resources such as fish. Traps such as the "Yana" used to catch Ayu fish have been in Japan since at least the paleolithic period.

It appears that people were highly successful in securing food, and as early as 18,000 years before the present, an increasing number of hunter-gatherers were adopting smaller foraging ranges and a more sedentary lifestyle. This is indicated by the discovery of cooking stones (indicates usind a fireplace for a more extended period of time) and arrow points (including arrow points made from obsidian rock instead of bone).

No pottery has been found from this period though, so the paleolithic period in Japan is often called "Pre-Ceramic". Manufactured pottery however was the next logical development in human settlement. The gradual proliferation of stone weapons meant a steady reduction in the availability of game over generations (due to both overhunting and increasing population pressures), and this led to increased uncertainty in terms of food supply. In short there was a general need for storing surplus food for leaner times, and for boiling/cooking both animals and plant matter. Boiling/Cooking was required both as a means of preserving food for storage, as well as an indication that the human population was diversifying its food sources. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was time to invent pottery.

Next: Mesolithic - Jomon Period (9500 BP to c. 2250 BP)

Contributed by: Declan Murphy

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