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During the Late Pleistocene, the Japanese archipelago formed a long
peninsular projection on the northeastern Pacific Rim, encircling the
much-reduced Japan Sea. As the evidence for human activities on the vast
lowland plain that is now the Yellow Sea has since been obliterated, the
archaeological data from some 5,000 Late Palaeolithic sites from the
archipelago provides us with information about the people who lived on the very
edge of the Eurasian continent facing the North Pacific.
They may have had some form of watercraft as
early as 30,000 years ago. The results of various physico-chemical analyses
indicate that obsidian flakes recovered from a number of Late Palaeolithic and
Jomon sites in and around Tokyo came from Kozushima Island, which is unlikely
to have been connected to the main Honshu Island even during the Last Glacial
Maximum. While direct evidence of subsistence activities is rarely preserved in
the volcanic soils of the archipelago, the Palaeolithic inhabitants of Honshu
who made repeated trips by rafts or boats to Kozushima for obsidian procurement
could very well have utilized marine resources for subsistence purposes.
Direct evidence of the use of fish is found at the Maedakochi site near
Tokyo, dated to about 11,000 cal. BC. This site is associated with early
pottery and over 2000 slender bifacial foliates. The disproportionally large
number of salmon teeth compared to the small of number of vertebral fragments,
as well as the charred condition of the bones, suggests that the site was a
specialized fishing camp where the seasonally abundant resource was harvested
and processed for storage.
By 8,000 cal. BC, when the use of ceramics was widespread throughout
the archipelago, clear evidence of maritime adaptation is present in numerous
shell middens, containing fish hooks and fish bones. The presence of such
species as tuna and bonito suggests deep sea fishing from boats, although the
actual remains of navigational equipments are not known until Early Jomon times
about 5,000 cal. BC.
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