History of Japan Ancient Japan to 1185

Andijon machine building Institute

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History of Japan

Ancient Japan to 1185

Prehistoric Japan

Pre-Ceramic culture

Japanese historical sites
It is not known when humans first settled on the Japanese archipelago. It was long believed that there was no Paleolithic occupation in Japan, but since World War II thousands of sites have been unearthed throughout the country, yielding a wide variety of Paleolithic tools. These include both core tools, made by chipping away the surface of a stone, and flake tools, made by working with a stone flake broken off from a larger piece of stone. There is little doubt that the people who used these implements moved to Japan from the Asian continent. At one stage, land connections via what are now the Korea and Tsushima straits made immigration from the Korean peninsula possible, while another connection, via what are now the Sōya and Tsugaru straits, allowed people to go in from northeastern Asia.
The Paleolithic Period in Japan is variously dated from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago, although the argument has been made for a Lower Paleolithic culture prior to 35,000 BCE. Nothing certain is known of the culture of the period, though it seems likely that people lived by hunting and gathering, used fire, and made their homes either in pit-type dwellings or in caves. No bone or horn artifacts of the kind associated with this period in other areas of the world have yet been found in Japan. Since there was no knowledge whatsoever of pottery, the period is referred to as the Pre-Ceramic era.
Climatic changes help to account for the existence of a Mesolithic stage in early Japanese culture, a time when much of the abundant fauna of earlier times became depleted by the expanding human population of the archipelago. The introduction of the bow and arrow is regarded as a local response to a decrease in game available for food.

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