The very first people in Japan likely arrived in 35,000 BC from Sakhalin.
There was an ice age at the time so they probably travelled across a land bridge
that existed between Sakhalin and Hokkaido
Now just because they were the first people, it doesn't necessarily mean that
they were the ancestors of the modern Japanese.
They could be, or it could be that
they arrived, survived for a while, and then just died off...like Brendan Fraser's career.
Oh Brendan.
The ancestors of the modern Japanese came from two waves of migration.
Migration One brought people who came to be known as the Jomon
Migration Two brought the Yayoi.
We'll talk about these people later.
We're still unsure about who made up Migration One.
There are two competing theories
One theory, based on genetic evidence, claims that the very first people who came over
from Sakhalin in 35,000 BC were indeed the ancestors of the Japanese.
Researchers found that their genes are similar to the genes of modern Japanese people.
A second theory holds that it was actually a migration from
Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
People were already living in Okinawa around 30,000 BC.
The migrants came over by boat from Okinawa to Kyushu at around 10,000 BC
when the earth was just coming out of the previous Ice Age.
This second theory is based on teeth shape.
Did you know that Asians have two patterns of teeth?
People from China to North East Asia, the backside of their upper four front teeth
have depressions. They're shaped like shovels.
They're also not aligned with
the rest of the upper teeth.
This teeth pattern is called Sinodonty, but we'll
just call it shovel teeth.
People from Southeast Asia and Taiwan to the
Philippines and Indonesia have smoother front teeth that are aligned with the others.
This is called Sundadonty, we'll call it non shovel teeth.
Today, most Japanese have shovel teeth, but in Hokkaido
they have non shovel teeth.
So the theory posits that a migration must have come
from Southeast Asia to Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, and finally to Kyushu at around 10,000 BC.
This theory is compelling because we know that people in Japan
after this time had non shovel teeth, and then there must have been a second
migration of shovel teethers who were more successful, probably because they
ate all of the non shovel teethers.
No that didn't happen.
The people from the second migration must have then spread over most of Japan.
That's another reason why this theory is strong, because we do have a lot of evidence for this second migration.
Most researchers agree that Migration Two happened at around 500 BC.
People crossed the waters from Korea to Kyushu. These were the Yayoi people.
They brought with them the practice of rice farming and quickly became the dominant
population in Japan.
We'll discuss these people in a later video.
There is a lot of evidence for Migration Two, but the most interesting I think is the Earwax Study.
Yeah that stuff in your ears.
There are two types of earwax: wet and dry. to
To see which type you have, stick a finger in your ear,
then pull it out,
then
put it in your mouth.
Mine's wet.
Your earwax type is determined by your genes.
About 85% of Japanese have dry earwax.
15% have wet earwax.
In a great example of getting
students involved in science, student teams across 42 Japanese high schools
carried out a study.
Researchers gave the students nail samples from people all across Japan.
The students extracted the DNA from the samples and isolated the
genes responsible for earwax type.
They then created a map of earwax types in Japan.
Scientists already knew that the Jomon people carried the genes for wet
earwax, and the Yayoi carried the genes for dry earwax.
The student's work
showed that dry earwax is more common in western Japan.
This reinforced the theory
that there was a Migration Two and helped to show the path that the Yayoi took to
spread across Japan.
The Yayoi migrated from Korea or China and then moved east
and north replacing most of the Jomon.
Again, I don't want you to think that
there were only two migrations into Japan.
People were moving back and forth
all the time in and out of Japan.
It's just that we believe the modern Japanese
are mainly descendants of people from these two migrations.
Before around 10,500 BC is what scientists called the Paleolithic Period of Japan, or the Stone
Age to us stupid people.
They were hunter-gatherers back in those days.
They moved where the big-game animals were, such as mammoths and bison.
Archaeologists have dug up all kinds of stone tools that they used.
Spear heads, blades,
pounding and grinding instruments.
There was a huge population increase between
16,000 and 13,000 BC, probably because the earth was coming out of the last ice
age and temperatures rose.
People switched to eating more plants, either
because all the big-game animals were dying out or PETA was just founded.
This caused people to move less, resulting in larger and larger settlements.
After the Stone Age came the Jomon period, which lasted from 10,500 BC to 300 BC.
The word Jomon means "cord pattern" or "rope pattern."
The pottery of Jomon people
had these markings of twisted cords which they made by carving patterns on
sticks and pressing or rolling them onto the clay.
The patterns were simple at
first, then became more elaborate over time.
We'll talk about the Jomon in the
next video, but here's something interesting about them.
They were probably direct ancestors of Japan's indigenous people: the Ainu.
You didn't know Japan at natives, did you?
There are not many of them. Only 25,000 officially.
They mostly live in Hokkaido.
Until recently they had their own separate
culture like Native Americans in the United States.
However, today they've mostly
been absorbed into Japanese culture.
The Ainu culture is AWESOME.
They clearly look different from other Japanese, they have wavy hair, lots of
body hair, white skin color, and a different eye shape.
After a certain age,
men didn't shave, and contrary to most Japanese men who have thin facial hair,
the Ainu have thick full beards and mustaches.
Think dwarves from Lord of the Rings.
Until recently, women had these prominent
black tattoos on their face, hands, and forearms.
These tattoos were started at a
young age and more was added as a woman grew up.
They used a black soot from
fireplaces for the black color.
A young girl only had a small dot on her upper
lip over time the tattoo grew until she reached maturity.
The tattoos were
supposed to repel evil spirits and ensure the woman's place in the afterlife.
They were also associated with marriage and childbirth.
Having a completed face tattoo is how you knew an Ainu woman
has reached maturity and is ready for marriage.
The pain from being tattooed
was supposed to help women prepare for the pain of childbirth.
This probably did not work very well.
We all know now that the best way to reduce the pain of
childbirth is a few glasses of wine.
The Ainu's tattoo use also suggests that the
Jomon people thousands of years ago also had tattoos.
Oh yeah, and the Ainu also
had pet BEARS.
Whaaat?
Not lame-arse teddy bears, actual bears!
The Ainu worshipped
animals as gods and bears were the head of the gods.
They thought that gods came to Earth in disguise as bears.
They sacrificed and ate adult bears
because the flesh and fur of the bear was an offering from a god, and the
sacrifice also allowed the god to return home.
Bear cubs are treated differently.
When they found a cub they brought it home and took care of it.
In some cases, cubs are treated even better than human children.
They were fed human food, people played with them.
If the cub did not yet have the teeth to
eat food, nursing mothers would breastfeed them.
The cub would live like
a prince up until it became two or three years old, then they would be sacrified,
to allow the God to return home.
Let's pick this up next time where
we'll talk about the JOMON.