Jōmon people in the context of "Jōmon pottery"

In Japanese history, the Jōmon period (Japanese: 縄文 時代, Hepburn: Jōmon jidai) is the time between c. 14,000 and 300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. Their ancestors migrated from Northeast Asia, Korean Peninsula, China, and Southeast Asia. Their civilization is divided into six distinct phases. They eventually admixed with the Yayoi people.

The Jōmon period was rich in tools and jewelry made from bone, stone, shell and antler; pottery figurines and vessels; and lacquerware. Jōmon pottery is noted for being decorated by having cords pressed into the wet outside of the pottery. Similar cultures developed in pre-Columbian cultures of the North American Pacific Northwest and especially the Valdivia culture in Ecuador because in these settings cultural complexity developed within a primarily hunting-gathering context with limited use of horticulture.

The Yamato (大和民族, Yamato minzoku; lit. 'Yamato ethnicity') or Wajin (和人 / 倭人; lit. 'Wa people'), also known as the Japanese, are an East Asian ethnic group that comprises over 98% of the population of Japan and are the primary Japanese people. Genetic and anthropometric studies have shown that the Yamato people predominantly descend from the Yayoi people, who migrated to Japan from the continent beginning during the 1st millennium BC, and to a lesser extent the indigenous Jōmon people who had inhabited the Japanese archipelago for millennia prior.

It can also refer to the first people that settled in Yamato Province (modern-day Nara Prefecture). Generations of Japanese archeologists, historians, and linguists have debated whether the word is related to the earlier Yamatai (邪馬臺). Around the 6th century, the Yamato clan set up Japan's first and only dynasty. The clan became the ruling faction in the area, and incorporated the natives of Japan and migrants from the mainland. The clan leaders also elevated their own belief system that featured ancestor worship into a national religion known as Shinto.

In Japanese history, the Jōmon period (Japanese: 縄文 時代, Hepburn: Jōmon jidai) is the time between c. 14,000 and 300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. Their ancestors migrated from Northeast Asia, Korean Peninsula, China, and Southeast Asia. Their civilization is divided into six distinct phases. They eventually admixed with the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people.

The Jōmon period was rich in tools and jewelry made from bone, stone, shell and antler; pottery figurines and vessels; and lacquerware. Jōmon pottery is noted for being decorated by having cords pressed into the wet outside of the pottery. Similar cultures developed in pre-Columbian cultures of the North American Pacific Northwest and especially the Valdivia culture in Ecuador because in these settings cultural complexity developed within a primarily hunting-gathering context with limited use of horticulture.

The Ōdai Yamamoto I Site (Japanese: 大平山元I遺跡, Hepburn: Ōdaiyamamoto ichi iseki) is a Jōmon archaeological site in the town of Sotogahama, Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan. Excavations in 1998 uncovered forty-six earthenware fragments which have been dated as early as 14,500 BCE (ca 16,500 BP); this places them among the earliest pottery currently known. As the earliest in Japan, this marks the transition from the Japanese Paleolithic to Incipient Jōmon. Other pottery of a similar date has been found at Gasya and Khummi on the lower Amur River. Such a date puts the development of pottery before the warming at the end of the Pleistocene.