Paleolithic and Jmon period

Jmon period pottery

Land bridges have periodically linked the Japanese archipelago to the Asian continent at Korea in
the southwest and Sakhalin in the north. The earliest firm evidence of human habitation is of early
Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers from 40,000 years ago, when Japan was separated from the
continent. Edge-ground axes dating to 3238,000 years ago, found in 224 sites
in Honshu and Kyushu, are unlike anything found in neighbouring areas of continental Asia, and
have been proposed as evidence for the first Homo sapiens in Japan; watercraft appear to have
been in use in this period. The earliest skeletal remains, those ofMinatogawa Man in Okinawa and
human skeletons in Ishigaki, date to 1620,000 years ago.
The Jmon period of Prehistoric Japan spans from about 12,000 BC (in some cases dates as early
as 14,500 BC are given) to about 800 BC. Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture that
reached a considerable degree ofsedentism 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 Japaneseas jmon. The pottery style characteristic of the first phases
of Jmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay.