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Jomon Era This page deals with the Japanese Historical Periods from Jomon. This is the earliest era in Japanese history, and I am not providing too much details on these. Reason? I do not know. Seriously, there isn't much information available about earliest Japanese. We know that they were there, they were using crude tools that their colleagues used around the world, and that they did have the knowhow of fire.
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| Earliest of Japanese Historical Eras
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| Jomon |
The Jomon era is characterized by pottery, and the earthenware they made (see fig.) were called Jomon doki.
Jomon means patterns of rope, and this era is named Jomon, as most of the stuff they made, resembled designs made by rope. The folks who lived in this period, the earliest inhabitants of Japan, were called Jomon jin. The Jomon jins were not like the nomads, and instead of moving around to where the food is, they had family life and were quite a settled lot. They used missiles, not the ones we use today, these were like a catapult which had a sharp and hard object used as a shot. They also knew how to hunt with bows and arrows, and crude weapons were available.
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Weapons they used for their battle to survial. Against the animals, and maybe, against themselves.
Archaeologists have found dogs burried with the family grave, which goes on to prove, they valued and kept dogs as pets and to protect them from wild animals. Whether there was robbery by humans, in the Jomon era, and whether the dogs kept potential theives off, is a matter of arguement. What do you think? Were there any robbers about 10,000 years ago?
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The Jomon jins, as I said, used a lot of Jomon pots made of soil. First they wet the soil, then they made a rope out of it (wring it into a rope), and they gave it the desired shape with their hands. As they already knew how to use fire, they heated the soil shaped by hand, and thus created an entire range of Jomonian pots.
Mostly they ate or stored their food in the pots they made.
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Food! What did the Jomon jins eat? They ate acrons mostly, and as its very bad to eat unless you apply some heat, they either boiled the acrons, or roasted. Acrons has tannin, and by God that tastes bitter. If you know how to, you can even create very tasty cookies which is still available in northern Japan, acron cookies, a tradition of 10,000 years. But served fresh. |
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They lived mainly on hunting, and deer was the most widely eaten food of the Jomon jins. Also they feasted on Wild boars. There is also evidence of fishery widely practised in the Jomon era, and they loved to eat salmon, oysters and sea bass. Whether they ate sushi, I do not know. There is no evidence that supports that the Jomon jins had even the vaguest knowledge of agriculture, which rules out the chance that there were any vegetarians. From that time, its hard to find 100% veg food in Japan. Also there is no evidence that they brewed any wine, leave alone sake.
They wore animal hides, and made clothes out of barks of trees. I am trying to figure out their fashion, and when I do, I certainly will let you have a look. Most probably there weren't any Kimonos. Not that long ago. There were about 270,000 Jomon jins in the country at that time, and together they lived and prospered, and laid the foundations to the next generation.
There is a mass grave discovered in a site, with a lot of damaged bones, which would mean there was a bloody war. There were immigrants from China, and there might have been a war. We are not sure yet, and there are different opinions on this one. I am far from being an expert, and I will leave this here. The Jomon jins mixed with the immigrants from East, in a freindly or foe manner, but they combined their cultures and their society and together went on to the next era. Lets go and see what happened in the next Yayoi period. Or you can go back to the Index.
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