The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler. Volume 4, The Medieval World.

Episode 58, Ancient Japan. Oh, Humans may have arrived in Japan between 30 and 40,000 years ago crossing land bridges from mainland Asia that no longer exist.

The earliest Japanese peoples would have been hunter-gatherers and they would have used

the obsidian of the islands to manufacture hand tools, but experts cannot agree on their specific ethnic origin.

The islands were fertile and presented a good opportunity for the earliest inhabitants,

but this was still far earlier than the Neolithic Revolution.

With these being island societies, some of the earliest occupants would have developed into

highly skilled fishermen supplementing their diet

which would have contained plenty of nuts and berries as well as other hunted meats.

Societies would have probably migrated according to the seasons and built

thatched shelters in which to stay in for the season in question.

In fact very little is known about the earliest

inhabitants of the Japanese islands. What we do know about early Japan is that it is

one of the places that we see the earliest emergencies of

advanced pottery and the earliest societies share their name with the pottery

style called Jomon.

The Jomon period may have begun around 15,000 years ago,

but we do know that it bridged the gap in Japanese history between hunter gathering

and the first signs of agriculture. Even though pottery is the first thing that

most people think of whenever talking about the Jomon there were significant

advances in a number of areas of life during this period. The term Jomon is a Japanese word that describes the rope or cord pattern style of pottery typical for this period.

The people of the Jomon culture were the ones who brought Japan into agricultural living,

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