Yayoi people

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Yayoi people attires

The Yayoi people (弥生人, Yayoi jin) were an ancient ethnicity that immigrated[1] to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD) and are characterized through Yayoi material culture.[2][3][4][5] Some argue for an earlier start of the Yayoi period, between 1000 and 800 BC, but this date is controversial.[1] The people of the Yayoi culture are regarded as the spreaders of agriculture and the Japonic languages throughout the whole archipelago, and were characterized by both local Jōmon hunter-gatherer and mainland Asian migrant ancestry.[6]

Origin

The terms Yayoi and Wajin can be used interchangeably, though "Wajin" (倭人) refers to the people of Wa and "Wajin" (和人) is another name for the modern Yamato people.[7]

The definition of the Yayoi people is complex: The term Yayoi people describes both farmers and hunter-gatherers exclusively living in the Japanese archipelago, and their agricultural transition. The Yayoi people refers specifically to the mixed descendants of

Jomon hunter-gatherers with Mainland Asian migrants, which adopted (rice) agriculture and other continental material culture.[8]

There are several hypotheses about the geographic origin of the mainland Asian migrants:

According to

Korean Peninsula before they were displaced and assimilated by arriving proto-Koreans.[18][19] A similar view was raised by Whitman (2012), further noting that the Yayoi are not closely related to the proto-Koreanic speakers and that Koreanic arrived later from Manchuria to the Korean peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the Japonic-speakers. Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.[20]

Genetics

To date, not much genetic data has been revealed about the Yayoi people. Two samples of "Northwestern Yayoi" from the Shimomotoyama site in northern Kyushu, in the Nagasaki Prefecture, have been analyzed and displayed mixed ancestry with a majority being derived from the local Jōmon hunter-gatherers, and varying degrees of Eastern Asian admixture.[21] Geneticists have called for a reinterpretation of the Yayoi people, which did not replace the hunter-gatherer populations of the Jōmon period, but emerged through admixture and hunter-gatherers adopting agriculture and material culture from Mainland Asia through transition.[22][23] Genetic testing on Neolithic to Bronze Age samples from the southern Korean peninsula revealed varying degrees of Jōmon ancestry, which ranges from around 10 to 95%. In contrast, modern Koreans have only little amounts of Jōmon ancestry or may lack it completely.[24][25] Based on studies on modern Japanese people, the Yayoi component makes up the majority ancestry of Japanese.[26][27] Another DNA analysis of four Yayoi remains revealed that the "immigrant Yayoi people were already mixed with the indigenous Jōmon people". The authors noted that "it is necessary to rethink the traditional theory of the formation of the Japanese population". The formation of the Japanese people and their culture is rooted in the local Jōmon hunter-gatherers which adopted Mainland Asian material culture and mixed with continental Asian immigrants, rather than being replaced. The Yayoi people represent the period of transition and formation of "Old Japanese" and their culture before receiving further influence from continental East Asia during the Kofun period.[28]

Sea People

Some historians call the Yayoi people The Sea people (海人族, Kaijinzoku, Amazoku, 海神族 Watatsumizoku) postulating that they migrated to Japan via the sea possibly from elsewhere, especially through the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.

Language

Main article: Classification of the Japonic languages

See also

Notes


References

  1. ^ a b Shinya Shōda (2007). "A Comment on the Yayoi Period Dating Controversy". Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology. 1. Archived from the original on 1 August 2019.
  2. ^ "Yayoi Period (300 BCE – 250 AD) | Japan Module".
  3. ^ "Timelines: JAPAN | Asia for Educators | Columbia University".
  4. ^ "Pitt Rivers Museum Body Arts | Bronze mirror".
  5. ^ Keally, Charles T. (2006-06-03). "Yayoi Culture". Japanese Archaeology. Charles T. Keally. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
  6. S2CID 218926428
    .
  7. ^ David Blake Willis & Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu: Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity, Archived 2017-01-06 at the Wayback Machine, p. 272: ‘“Wajin,” which is written with Chinese characters that can also be read “Yamato no hito” (Yamato person)’.
  8. S2CID 218926428
    . The term Yayoi has four uses, which can create much confusion. First, it is the designation of the period beginning with the introduction of rice agriculture around 1000 BC until the advent of the Mounded Tomb Culture in the third century AD. Yayoi is a period designation exclusive to Japan; it includes both farmers and hunter–gatherers and entails the agricultural transition in a time-transgressive and regionally disparate process. Second, 'Yayoi people' may refer to anyone living in the Japanese Islands in the Yayoi period, or third, Yayoi may refer specifically to admixed people (Mumun + Jōmon in varying in proportions and across great distances). Fourth, Yayoi may indicate acculturation: the adoption of (rice) agriculture (and other continental material culture) by Jōmon-lineage people in the Yayoi period. All of these conflicting aspects of Yayoi must be kept in mind and clearly defined in any discussion.
  9. ^ Diamond, Jared. "In Search of Japanese Roots". Discover Magazine.
  10. PMID 31209235
    .
  11. ^ ロシア極東新石器時代研究の新展開 Archived 2017-08-26 at the Wayback Machine (in Japanese)
  12. ^ 崎谷満『DNA・考古・言語の学際研究が示す新・日本列島史』(勉誠出版　2009年)(in Japanese)
  13. ^ 徳永勝士 (2003)「HLA と人類の移動」『Science of humanity Bensei 』(42), 4-9, 東京：勉誠出版 (in Japanese)
  14. ^ 岡正雄『異人その他 日本民族=文化の源流と日本国家の形成』 言叢社 1979 (in Japanese)
  15. ^ "Javanese influence on Japanese". Languages of The World. 2011-05-09. Archived from the original on 2018-07-25. Retrieved 2018-07-25.
  16. ^ 鳥越憲三郎『原弥生人の渡来 』(角川書店,1982)、『倭族から日本人へ』(弘文堂 ,1985)、『古代朝鮮と倭族』(中公新書,1992)、『倭族トラジャ』(若林弘子との共著、大修館書店,1995)、『弥生文化の源流考』(若林弘子との共著、大修館書店,1998)、『古代中国と倭族』(中公新書,2000)、『中国正史倭人・倭国伝全釈』(中央公論新社,2004)
  17. ^ 諏訪春雄編『倭族と古代日本』(雄山閣出版、1993)また諏訪春雄通信100
  18. ^ Janhunen, Juha (2010). "Reconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia". Studia Orientalia (108): 281–304. there are strong indications that the neighbouring Baekje state (in the southwest) was predominantly Japonic-speaking until it was linguistically Koreanized.
  19. ^ Vovin, Alexander (2013). "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics. 15 (2): 222–240.
  20. ISSN 1939-8433
    .
  21. S2CID 218926428
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  22. S2CID 198267247
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  23. PMID 34533991
    .
  24. ^ Journal, The Asia Pacific (August 2022). "Re-thinking Jōmon and Ainu in Japanese History". The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  25. S2CID 251410856
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  26. S2CID 218926428
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  27. S2CID 234247309
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  28. ^ "Analysis of the relationship between Jomon and immigrant Yayoi people using whole genome sequencing data". KAKEN. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
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