A recent study by Michael F. Hammer has shown considerable genetic similarity between the Japanese and several other Asian populations.[8] The study, along with several others, claims that Y-chromosome patrilines crossed from the Asian mainland into the Japanese Archipelago, where they continue to make up a large proportion of the Japanese male lineage.[9] These patrilines seem to have undergone extensive genetic admixture with the Jōmon period populations previously established in Japan.[8]
Another recent study of the origins of Japanese people is based on the "dual structure model" proposed by Hanihara in 1991.[10] He concludes that modern Japanese lineages consist of the original Jōmon people, who moved into the Japanese Archipelago during Paleolithic times from their homeland in southeast Asia, and immigrants from the Yayoi period. In recent decades, it has been proposed that the Japanese people are related to the Yi, Hani and Dai people. These proposals are based on folk customs as well as genetic evidence.[11]
A second wave of immigrants from southeast Asia[clarification needed name?] is also believed to have migrated into northeastern Asia. Following a population expansion in Neolithic times, these newcomers then found their way to the Japanese archipelago sometime during the Yayoi period. As a result, miscegenation was rife in the island regions of Kyūshū, Shikoku and Honshū, but did not prevail in the outlying islands of Okinawa and Hokkaido. Here, the Ryukyuan and Ainu people continued to dominate, as suggested by studies of human bone and teeth development and comparitive analyses of mitochondrial DNA between Jōmon people and medieval Ainu.
Masatoshi Nei opposed the "dual structure model" and alleged that the genetic distance data shows the origin of Japanese was in northeast Asia, moving to Japan perhaps more than thirty thousand years ago.[12]
The study on the population change in the ancient period was also discussed. The estimated number of people in the late Jōmon period numbered about one hundred thousand, compared to that of the Nara period which had a population of about three million. Taking the growth rates of hunting and agricultural societies into account, it is calculated that about one and half million immigrants moved to Japan in the period. This figure seems to be overestimated and is being recalculated today[citation needed].
Paleolithic era
Archaeological evidence indicates that Stone Age people lived in the Japanese Archipelago during the Paleolithic period between 39,000 and 21,000 years ago.[13][14] Japan was then connected to mainland Asia by at least one land bridge, and nomadic hunter-gatherers crossed to Japan from East Asia, Siberia, and possibly Kamchatka. Flint tools and bony implements of this era have been excavated in Japan.[15]
Jōmon and Ainu people
Incipient Jōmon pottery
The world's oldest known pottery was developed by the Jōmon people in the Upper Paleolithic period, 14th millennium BCE. The name, "Jōmon" (縄文 Jōmon), which means "cord-impressed pattern", comes from the characteristic markings found on the pottery. The Jōmon people were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, though at least one middle to late Jōmon site (Minami Mosote (南溝手?), ca. 1200-1000 BCE) had a primitive rice-growing agriculture. They relied primarily on fish for protein. It is believed that the Jōmon had very likely migrated from North Asia or Central Asia and became the Ainu of today. Research suggests that the Ainu retain a certain degree of uniqueness in their genetic make-up, while having some affinities with different regional populations in Japan as well as the Nivkhs of the Russian Far East. Based on more than a dozen genetic markers on a variety of chromosomes and from archaeological data showing habitation of the Japanese Archipelago dating back 30,000 years, it is argued that the Jōmon actually came from northeastern Asia and settled on the islands far earlier than some have proposed.[16]
Yayoi people
Around 400-300 BC, the Yayoi people began to enter the Japanese islands, intermingling with the Jōmon. The Yayoi brought wet-rice farming and advanced bronze and iron technology to Japan. Although the islands were already abundant with resources for hunting and dry-rice farming, Yayoi farmers created more productive wet-rice paddy field systems. This allowed the communities to support larger populations and spread over time, in turn becoming the basis for more advanced institutions and heralding the new civilization of the succeeding Kofun Period.
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