A marvelous write-up on Bakekujira and whale cults of Japan, and a visual treat for lovers of kaidan and whales, is to be found at Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

Source: PNAS study  Fig. 1 Cishan site in North China, proposed centre of millet domestication in East Asia

Broomcorn millet, barnyard millet, and foxtail millet were all species of millet cultivated by the Jomon people of Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea). Millet finds are from late Middle Jomon sites in Hokkaido, late Jomon Kazaharai site in Aomori, Northeastern Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea); and Yayoi Nabatake site in Kyushu (Cowan, The Origins of Agriculture p. 24). Broomcorn millet was present in southwestern Japan by the 2,000 B.C. (Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture, p 121). Foxtail millet cultigens are found in a widespread sphere from Southwestern Asia, Europe to Transcaucasian Russia and the Far East (C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 24; Rao et al., 1987). It is thought that from China foxtail millet spread westward towards Europe (Oelke, E.A., 1990).

It was earlier established that China is at the primary center of the diversity of broomcorn millet cultivation (see C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 23; Zeven and Zhukovsky, 1975:32). A new study on the origins of millet domestication, could establish the routes of dispersal of millet cultivation/gathering, storage pit usage and associated tools to Japan, and thereby also shed some light on the possible origins of the incoming migrations of people during the Jomon or on early exchanges with the continent. Historical documents show that foxtail millet was an important crop during Zhou dynasty China, while the earliest foxtail millet sites are from Hunamni and Hohnamni Bronze Age sites in South Korea ( C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 25). All evidence points to millet plant domestication and cultivation in Japan earlier than the Late Jomon period, and certainly, by the end of the Late Jomon period in northeastern Japan (Gremillion, KJ, People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp 102-103)

Research analysis in “Earliest domestication of common millet (Panicum miliaceum) in East Asia extended to 10,000 years ago” concluded that

“the earliest significant common millet cultivation system was established in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP, and that the relatively dry condition in the early Holocene may have been favorable for the domestication of common millet over foxtail millet. Our study shows that common millet appeared as a staple crop in northern China ≈10,000 years ago, suggesting that common millet might have been domesticated independently in this area and later spread to Russia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. Nevertheless, like Mesopotamia, where the spread of wheat and barley to the fertile floodplains of the Lower Tigris and Euphrates was a key factor in the emergence of civilization, the spread of common millet to the more productive regions of the Yellow River and its tributaries provided the essential food surplus that later permitted the development of social complexity in the Chinese civilization.”

The above study reported “the discovery of husk phytoliths and biomolecular components identifiable solely as common millet from newly excavated storage pits at the Neolithic Cishan site, China, dated to between ca. 10,300 and ca. 8,700 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP). After ca. 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops began to contain a small quantity of foxtail millet. Our research reveals that the common millet was the earliest dry farming crop in East Asia, which is probably attributed to its excellent resistance to drought.”

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and common millet (or broomcorn millet; Panicum miliaceum) were among the world’s most important and ancient domesticated crops. They were staple foods in the semiarid regions of East Asia (China, Japan, Russia, India, and Korea) and even in the entire Eurasian continent before the popularity of rice and wheat, and are still important foods in these regions today….

Thirty years ago, the world’s oldest millet remains, dating to ca. 8,200 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), were discovered at the Early Neolithic site of Cishan, northern China. The site contained >50,000 kg of grain crops stored in the storage pits (7–9). Until now, the importance of these findings has been constrained by limited taxonomic identification with regard to whether they are from foxtail millet (S. italica) or common millet (P. miliaceum), because the early reported S. italica identifications are not all accepted (4,9–12). This article presents the phytoliths, biomolecular records, and new radiocarbon dating from newly excavated grain crop storage pits at the Cishan site. Large modern reference collections are used to compare and contrast microfossil morphology and biomolecular components in different millets and related grass species (13). The renewed investigations show that common millet agriculture arose independently in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP. Our findings contribute to our knowledge of agricultural origins across the globe and have broader implications for understanding the development of human societies.

The Cishan site (36°34.511′ N, 114°06.720′ E) is located near the junction between the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain at an elevation of 260–270 m above sea level (Fig. 1). The archaeological site, containing a total of 88 storage pits with significant quantities (≈109 m³) of grain crop remains, was excavated from 1976 to 1978 (7, 8). Each storage pit included 0.3- to 2-m-thick grain crops, which were well preserved and found in situ in the 3- to 5-m-deep loess layer (9). All grain remains have been oxidized to ashes soon after they were exposed to air. Archaeological excavations also revealed the remains of houses and numerous millstones (Fig. S1), stone shovels, grind rollers, potteries, rich faunal remains, and plant assemblages including charred fruits of walnut (Juglans regia), hazel (Corylus heterophylla), and hackberry (Celtis bungeana) (7–9). Only 2 ¹⁴C dates of charcoal from previously excavated H145 and H48 storage pits yielded uncalibrated ages of 7355 ± 100 yr BP and 7235 ± 105 yr BP, respectively (8). These remains represent the earliest evidence for the significant use of dry-farming crop plants in the human diet in East Asia. They also suggest that by this time agriculture had already been relatively well developed here.

According to archeobotanical research, the early charred grains of common millet occurred during the initial stages of various Early Neolithic sites (Fig. 1), including Dadiwan (ca. 7.8–7.35 cal kyr BP) (21), Xinglonggou (ca. 8.0–7.5 cal kyr BP) (22), and Yuezhuang (ca. 7.87 cal kyr BP) (23) in North China, but foxtail millet was barely present during these stages. Lee et al. (24) have speculated that the Early Neolithic predominance of broomcorn over foxtail millet at Xinglonggou and Yuezhuang ca. 6000 cal B.C. might be a regional phenomenon, implying that broomcorn millet might have been domesticated earlier than foxtail millet. Our analytical results of both phytoliths and biomolecular components have established that the earliest cereal remains stored in the Cishan Neolithic sites, during ca. 10,300–8,700 cal yr BP, are not foxtail millet, but only common millet. After 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops gradually contained 0.4–2.8% foxtail millet. Our study also suggests that common millet was used as a staple food significantly earlier than foxtail millet in northern China. It provides direct evidence to show that, by 10,000 cal yr BP, the early people in northern China had developed various methods of maintenance and multiplication of millet seeds for the next generation, and had known how to store crops of staple food in secure, dry places of storage pits during the Early Neolithic epoch.

Common millet has the lowest water requirement among all grain crops; it is also a relatively short-season crop, and could grow well in poor soils (5, 6, 25). The geographical distribution of both foxtail millet and common millet in China (Fig. S4) shows that foxtail millet is more common in the semiwet eastern areas, and its optimal growth occurs at mean annual temperature (MAT) from 8 to 10 °C and mean annual precipitation (MAP) from 450 to 550 mm. However, common millet is more adapted to the drier interior areas, and its optimal growing conditions occur at MAT from 6 to 8 °C and MAP from 350 to 450 mm (5, 6). The origin and dispersal of millet agriculture is a key problem closely related to the history of human impact on the environment and transformation of natural vegetation.

Paleoenvironmental data from the Weinan section (26–29) (Fig. 1) in the southern part of the Loess Plateau between the Cishan and Dadiwan sites are crucial for understanding the early stage of the forager–cultivator transition. The early Holocene was a period of significant environmental change marked by dry climate conditions as inferred from sediment texture (26, 28), magnetic susceptibility (26, 28), pollen (27), phytoliths (28), and mollusk assemblages (29). These proxy records show an environmental transition from cold–dry (ca. 11,000–8,700 cal yr BP) to warm–wet (ca. 8,700–5,500 cal yr BP) conditions. Many lacustrine and loess records from the Chinese Loess Plateau to Central Asia also support the scenario of a dry climate during the early Holocene (30–34). Under the drier climate conditions, soil development was slowed, and the soil developed on the underlying older and coarser loess of the glacial period was poor in nutrients (28). This raises the possibility that common millet was more significant than foxtail millet in the early stages of food production in North China because it was more adaptable than foxtail millet to the dry condition prevailing during the early Holocene. The common millet cultivation may involve complex selection by natural forces and human activities, although no clear evidence has been documented in this region for the transitions from gathering to cultivation and/or from a wild ancestor to domesticated common millet.

…

References and source readings:

COWAN, C.Wesley., WATSON, Patty Jo; BENO, Nancy L., The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective p. 23-24).

D’Andrea, A. C. 1995. Later Jomon Subsistence in Northeastern Japan: New Evidence from Palaeoethnobotanical Studies. Asian Perspectives 34 (2): 195-227

This paper discusses prehistoric subsistence and the development of plant husbandry in northeastern Tohoku (northern Honshu). Archaeobotanical sampling was carried out at two sites in eastern Aomori Prefecture. Tominosawa is a Middle Jomon village site which produced a spectrum of nut and weedy plant species similar to that recovered from contemporary sites in southwestern Hokkaido. At the Kazahari site, pithouses from two phases of occupation were sampled for archaeobotanical remains: Tokoshinai IV (c. 1000 B.C.) and Fukurashima (c. 150 B.C.). The pithouse deposits produced evidence for Late Jomon rice, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet dating to the first millennium B.C. Sampling of later Fukurashima contexts produced evidence of rice, foxtail and broomcorn millet, Japanese barnyard millet, and hemp. These data demonstrate that rice and millets have been present in northeastern Tohoku since c. 1000 B.C.

NASU, Hiroo The Initial Form of Rice and Millet Cultivation during the Final Jomon-Yayoi Transition Era from the View of Archaeobotanical Weed Assemblages Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History Vol. 187 July 2014

Gremillion, Kristen J., People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 102-3

Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory, pp 117-132, Monographs in Archaeology, No. 4 Prehistory Press p. 121

Oelke, E.A., Oplinger, E.S., Putnam, D.H., Durgan, B.R., Doll, J.D. and Undersander, D.J. (1990) Millets, in Alternative Field Crops Manual)

Setaria introduction

A microscopic image of basil pollen, found at a third-century ruin in Nara prefecture, central Japan. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

Source: WSJ, March 2015
Researchers in Japan’s Nara prefecture said they have confirmed that the oldest basil pollen in the country originally came from China or the Korean peninsula, indicating that a trading society existed in the area then.

The pollen was found in 1991 in a ditch at the third-century Makimuku ruins, a national historic site thought to be one of the possible locations of the Yamataikoku kingdom, which was led by Queen Himiko. The kingdom’s exact location is still being debated.

Academics at the Research Center for Makimukugaku had compared the basil pollen in question to other types in Japan today, and traced its roots to those that grow in Southeast Asia.

…

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City
“The findings show that there was exchange between those in the area and other countries back then,” Teruhiko Hashimoto, a researcher at the center, told Japan Real Time Friday.

The pollen was found in a ditch which was a part of a drainage system that connected the central part of the town and its outskirts. Pollen from safflower has also been found there.

“Safflower was likely used for dyeing. Basil was probably used for medical purposes, but it isn’t clear. It was possibly used for a powerful figure,” Mr. Hashimoto said.

Salt, and iron, aside from rice, were the most precious economic and trading commodities and resources of ancient East Asian states. When the rulers of the polities controlled or monopolized trade in those resources, they gained the keys to the kingdom (See Chinese Discourses on Salt and Iron and Yellow River Emperor Huang Ti is said to have presided over a war fought over salt).

Photo: Ryo Murakami

Japan developed its own unique method of salt production because the islands lacked salt lakes and rock salt mines. Moshio salt-making techniques involving seawater and seaweed gathered from the Seto-uchi Inland Sea began 2,500 years ago, and the region remained the most important of salt centres in Japan throughout (see “Salt” by Mark Kurlansky, p. 373). The Shio no Michi or salt road to the inland regions such as Shinshu-Nagano was one of the most important trade routes, with salt being the most important commodity of all.

Below is an article on the ancient heritage of salt production …the article focuses on methods that have been known in Japan since at least the 5th c. that are still seen today, although even earlier salt production centres, and salt production involving evaporation pots from 100 sites have been found, and have been known since the prehistoric and neolithic Jomon period.

Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition by Laura Cocora and Kaori Brand United Nations University

Japan’s culture is one of sea salt. For centuries, salt production has been an important activity throughout Japan and coastal communities have developed sophisticated techniques for producing this vital mineral from seawater.

One of the oldest records of salt making appears in the eighth-century chronicles of Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan’s oldest mythological and historical writings. There it is said that when the ship that brought water for the imperial table became too old to be used, it was turned into firewood used to boil thick brine down to salt that was then given away to the provinces. Snapshots of salt making scenes also appear in court poetry and in noh theatre. Typically, they depict the lonesomeness and isolation of salt shores.

Outside the world of literature, the importance of salt is reflected in the presence of salt routes, place names associated with salt and shrines where salt gods are worshipped. Salt is used as a cleansing and purifying agent in a variety of ritual contexts.

Salt making in Noto Peninsula

The small artisanal salt farms still found today on the shores of Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture stand as a symbol of the co-evolution of human societies and their environment in the context of the extraction and use of salt as a fundamental marine resource.

Salt production in Noto dates back at least as far as the fifth century, when small ceramic pots were used to boil the seawater. Later, these techniques fell into oblivion, as a new salt manufacturing method, known as the agehama style, started to develop sometime around the eighth century. The new method consisted of two separate stages — water was first drawn from the sea and spread on banked sand terraces to evaporate and the resulting brine was then boiled down over a specially constructed kiln.

Even after technological advances led to the introduction of a more efficient, labour-saving production method elsewhere in Japan, older agehama techniques live on in the Noto Peninsula. Their survival was the result of a locally-specific combination of natural environmental characteristics and socio-economic factors.

The peninsula’s rocky shoreline, with minimal tidal flows, and its climate (characterized by high humidity and limited sunshine) were not suitable for the new method that relied on the flooding of terraces by natural tidal variations.

Despite the not so favourable natural conditions, the tax policies of the Edo period’s (1603-1868) ruling local authorities, the Kaga Clan, played a crucial role in shaping the peninsula’s identity as a salt producing area. During the Edo period, rice was the basis of the taxation system, but cultivable land was scarce in Noto. Under the Kaga Clan’s ‘rice for salt’ system, farmers who did not own enough land to allow them to pay their rice taxes and secure the food necessary for their subsistence borrowed rice from the government, paying for it in salt at a fixed rate.

The clan held a monopoly on the salt trade, with profits from sales being used to pay up to a quarter of the daimyo’s (territorial lord) travels to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) as part of the system of alternate attendance established by the Edo shogunate (feudal military dictatorship).

The rice for salt system was instrumental in making salt production one of the most important occupations of people along the coasts of Noto, while restricting the salt workers’ freedom for social or geographical mobility.

Thus, the salt terraces that once lined the peninsula’s shores — which can still be seen in photographs from the 1940s — emerged as veritable ‘cultural landscapes’. These reflected not only the specific constraints and opportunities of the natural environment, but also a unique socio-economic context that fused the local people’s dependence on natural resources with their control by the elites.

The knowledge heritage of agehama salt making

In 1868, the Meiji Restoration marked the end of feudalism and launched an era of modernization influenced by western models. Overall social and economic restructuring, the abolition of the clan monopoly on salt, and the introduction of new policies and technologies led to a sharp decline in traditional salt production in Noto Peninsula. With new employment opportunities offering different life choices, former salt makers moved to other industries and salt terraces disappeared from the landscape.

When a new wave of salt industry modernization measures — introduced by the central government in 1958 — threatened to wipe out traditional production, the local administration of Suzu City in Ishikawa Prefecture provided funding to the families still practising this cultural tradition. Eventually, only one family remained. In recognition of its value, both culturally and as a tourism resource, agehama-style salt making was designated an intangible folk cultural asset of Ishikawa Prefecture in 1992 and a national intangible folk cultural asset by the Culture Agency in 2008, stimulating new initiatives to revive traditional techniques in recent years.

Agehama-style salt making, as practiced today in Noto, evokes the shadows of the salt farms as places of intense labour and the working and social conditions of the people employed in salt making. However, it is not only in the reconstruction of the past that its value resides, but also in the transmission of the traditional knowledge and practices that are vital to its survival.

On a first level, such traditional knowledge encompasses the architectural aspects, equipment and ways of production associated with salt making. While many of the tools and materials used have undergone little change for centuries, others have been replaced with new ones in the quest for comfort and efficiency. The artisanal knowledge needed to craft these tools and build ovens using traditional techniques is increasingly in danger of being lost.

Agehama-style salt makers are also custodians of a wealth of experiential and traditional knowledge of their natural environment, which includes elements of integrated management of land and marine ecosystems. Such knowledge embraces various dimensions, from the salt makers’ renowned ability to predict the weather by reading cloud patterns and sea currents, to their empirical knowledge of the state and change of marine ecosystems and resources.

Although salt makers now tend to use cheap wood waste from construction sites as fuel, in the past, salt production practices were closely connected with inland regions through the supply of fuel wood, with salt makers owning and managing forest areas to ensure a sustainable wood supply. The two-stage process of agehama salt making reflects this interconnectedness in its effort to reduce fuel consumption by relying on human and natural forces to produce a highly saturated brine solution prior to boiling.

Such elements of sustainable land and resource use at the landscape level make salt farms more than just salt yielding sites. They have the potential of contributing to new approaches to resource conservation and use, such as ‘satoumi’, a recently introduced concept designating socio-ecological production landscapes in coastal areas, which are managed for the ecosystem services they provide.

The question that remains unanswered is how the knowledge associated with these unique cultural landscapes — which have developed as part of salt’s complex itinerary in the culture and history of Japan — can be integrated with scientific knowledge to develop models of resource use and management that maintain or enhance natural values in the landscape.

• ♦ •

This video was produced by Kaori Brand of United Nations University in collaboration with Ishikawa Prefecture as part of an initiative on traditional knowledge and the wisdom of satoyama/satoumi charcoal and salt making traditions in Ishikawa.

Creative Commons License
Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (2010•06•09, Our World) by Laura Cocora is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Dotaku bells found on Awajishima Island (The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 20, 2015)

Source: The Yomiuri Shimbun

Seven dotaku bronze bells from the mid-Yayoi period, or around the second century B.C., were found in Minami-Awaji, Hyogo Prefecture, on Awajishima island, the prefectural and municipal boards of education said Tuesday.

The bells were found in a pile of sand taken from the city’s coastal district Matsuho, and they were named “Matsuho dotaku.”

This is the fourth-largest number of dotaku bells to be excavated from a single site. The biggest trove, 39 bells, was found at the Kamo Iwakura Ruins in Unnan, Shimane Prefecture. The latest discovery is the oldest trove of dotaku bells to be unearthed at one time. Experts say “These dotaku bells are worthy to be designated as national treasures as they could help understand the use of dotaku bells in ancient rituals.”

The dotaku bells are from 22 to 32 centimeters in height and from 13 to 19 centimeters in base width, and do not have any drawings on them. One of the seven bells has a handle — called a chu — with a lozenge-shaped cross section. This is believed to be the oldest type of dotaku bell, and only 11 other bells of this type have been confirmed in the nation so far.

Meanwhile, three of the seven bells have 8- to 13-centimeter tongues made of bronze. This is the largest number of tongues found at once.

Picture illustrates what a tongue is Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun

There are no other known cases of a number of dotaku bells with tongues found buried at one time. So there is a possibility that the recently discovered bells were used in the oldest form of rituals in which many dotaku bells were buried together.

Clue for use of dotaku bells in rituals

The seven dotaku bronze bells discovered on Awajishima island can provide clues for the study of their use in rituals in early times.

The practice of burying a number of dotaku bells together is believed to have been concentrated in two periods — the mid-Yayoi period — from the first century B.C. through to the first century — and the late-Yayoi period at the end of the second century. However, the latest discovery has pushed back the beginning of the practice by more than a century, and some theorize that the practice resumed after a certain period.

Depiction of the samurai  Suenaga Takezaki repelling Mongol and Korean arrows and bombs at Torikai-Gata. “Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba” by 竹崎季長 – 蒙古襲来絵詞. Open source:  Wikimedia Commons

Genetics researchers in a 2003 report, The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols, AJHG,  Volume 72, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 717–721, Tatiana Zerjal, et al., found that the Mongol Y-DNA marker showed up in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea. The report also identified the origin to be “most likely in Mongolia, where the largest number of different star-cluster haplotypes is found ( fig. 1). Thus, a single male line, probably originating in Mongolia, has spread in the last ∼1,000 years to represent ∼8% of the males in a region stretching from northeast China to Uzbekistan”.

Researchers show the footprint of Genghis Khan Y-chromosome star-cluster marker across Eurasia. The Mongols left no genetic trace in Japan, however, corroborating the historical accounts of the Japanese having successfully repelled the Mongols and eventually driving them back to the mainland, despite the earlier devastating defeats during the Battles of Bunei. Fig. 2 from the report

Excerpted from the report:

Courtesy of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government

The ancient art of cormorant fishing is called ukai and is still practised in 13 cities in Japan today. Usho fishing masters are charged with procuring ayu fishes specially for the Imperial Royal Household.  Cormorant fishing is known to be a traditional fishing method in East Asia since the 3rd century, while the practice apears to have emerged in Europe in medieval times from Venice, in Europe, cormorant fishing is a practice restricted to a leisure activity of the royal courts and the aristocracy (see Marcus Beike’s “The history of cormorant fishing in Europe”). In Japan, engravings of cormorants and fish on earthenware excavated from 9th c. Kofu now informs us that cormorant fishing began much earlier than thought. In China, cormorant fishing is said to be dying out (Business Insider, Dec 2013).

***

Drawings reveal evidence of early cormorant fishing (The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 12, 2015)

KOFU — A piece of ninth-century earthenware excavated in Kofu at the ruins of an ancient village has been found to feature a drawing that may show cormorant fishing, the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum has announced. According to the Fuefuki-based museum, the earthenware — found in the Sotochudai ruins, which date back to a span of time from the Kofun period (ca 300-ca 710) to the Heian period (eighth-12th century) — shows pictures of cormorants believed to be diving into the water and catching a fish. It is said that local people usually fished with the assistance of cormorants in the Fuefukigawa river near the village ruins during the Kamakura period in the late 12th century to the early 14th century. A curator at the museum said the earthenware indicates that fishing using the birds had already started in the region before the Kamakura period. Excavated in 1993, the disc-shaped earthenware with a handgrip-like piece on the central part is about 16 centimeters in diameter, and researchers believe that it was used as the lid of a vessel for eating. Pictures on the reverse display up to nine cormorants, with lines carved using an implement with a spatulate tip. Fishermen are not seen in the drawing, but examination conducted by experts in April this year indicated the possibility that it describes the sequence of a cormorant’s actions in fishing — diving into water, catching a fish, returning to the water’s surface and so on. Nowadays, people in the Isawa district of Fuefuki engage in cormorant fishing in the summer. The unearthed lid will be on display at the museum through July 6.

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Read more about the origin of cormorant fishing here.  The practice though both once widespread in both China and Japan, is recorded as an early practice of Japan’s by the Chinese in the Book of Sui (See Wikipedia article on Cormorant fishing.)

According to Amino Yoshihiko, see “Rethinking Japanese History” at pp. 36-37, cormorant fishing arrived in Japan together with rice agriculturalists around 300 B.C.E.

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Where to see cormorant fishing in Japan today

Gifu Nagaragawa Ukai Cormorant fishing. It will be held every day during the period except on the night of the full moon (Sept. 28 this year) or when the water is excessively muddy. Fee is ¥3,100 (weekdays) or ¥3,400 (Sat., Sun. and national holidays), without meal. For reservation, please call 058-262-0104 (Gifu City Ukai Kanransen Jimusho), or reserve through major travel agencies, like JTB.

Schedule & Key events:
● daily (except Sept. 28)
7:15 p.m.-8:30 p.m. (Boarding time: 6:15 p.m.)

Location: Nagara River, Gifu, Gifu

Access:
JR Tokaido Honsen Line to Gifu Station. From there, take bus to Nagara-bashi Bus Stop (15 min.)

Festival information compiled in cooperation with the Tourist Information Center of the Japan National Tourist Organization. (10th floor, Tokyo Kotsu Kaikan Bldg., 2-10-1, Yurakucho, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; (03) 3201-3331). Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.

A marvelous write-up on Bakekujira and whale cults of Japan, and a visual treat for lovers of kaidan and whales, is to be found at Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

Source: PNAS study  Fig. 1 Cishan site in North China, proposed centre of millet domestication in East Asia

Broomcorn millet, barnyard millet, and foxtail millet were all species of millet cultivated by the Jomon people of Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea). Millet finds are from late Middle Jomon sites in Hokkaido, late Jomon Kazaharai site in Aomori, Northeastern Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea); and Yayoi Nabatake site in Kyushu (Cowan, The Origins of Agriculture p. 24). Broomcorn millet was present in southwestern Japan by the 2,000 B.C. (Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture, p 121). Foxtail millet cultigens are found in a widespread sphere from Southwestern Asia, Europe to Transcaucasian Russia and the Far East (C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 24; Rao et al., 1987). It is thought that from China foxtail millet spread westward towards Europe (Oelke, E.A., 1990).

It was earlier established that China is at the primary center of the diversity of broomcorn millet cultivation (see C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 23; Zeven and Zhukovsky, 1975:32). A new study on the origins of millet domestication, could establish the routes of dispersal of millet cultivation/gathering, storage pit usage and associated tools to Japan, and thereby also shed some light on the possible origins of the incoming migrations of people during the Jomon or on early exchanges with the continent. Historical documents show that foxtail millet was an important crop during Zhou dynasty China, while the earliest foxtail millet sites are from Hunamni and Hohnamni Bronze Age sites in South Korea ( C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 25). All evidence points to millet plant domestication and cultivation in Japan earlier than the Late Jomon period, and certainly, by the end of the Late Jomon period in northeastern Japan (Gremillion, KJ, People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp 102-103)

Research analysis in “Earliest domestication of common millet (Panicum miliaceum) in East Asia extended to 10,000 years ago” concluded that

“the earliest significant common millet cultivation system was established in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP, and that the relatively dry condition in the early Holocene may have been favorable for the domestication of common millet over foxtail millet. Our study shows that common millet appeared as a staple crop in northern China ≈10,000 years ago, suggesting that common millet might have been domesticated independently in this area and later spread to Russia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. Nevertheless, like Mesopotamia, where the spread of wheat and barley to the fertile floodplains of the Lower Tigris and Euphrates was a key factor in the emergence of civilization, the spread of common millet to the more productive regions of the Yellow River and its tributaries provided the essential food surplus that later permitted the development of social complexity in the Chinese civilization.”

The above study reported “the discovery of husk phytoliths and biomolecular components identifiable solely as common millet from newly excavated storage pits at the Neolithic Cishan site, China, dated to between ca. 10,300 and ca. 8,700 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP). After ca. 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops began to contain a small quantity of foxtail millet. Our research reveals that the common millet was the earliest dry farming crop in East Asia, which is probably attributed to its excellent resistance to drought.”

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and common millet (or broomcorn millet; Panicum miliaceum) were among the world’s most important and ancient domesticated crops. They were staple foods in the semiarid regions of East Asia (China, Japan, Russia, India, and Korea) and even in the entire Eurasian continent before the popularity of rice and wheat, and are still important foods in these regions today….

Thirty years ago, the world’s oldest millet remains, dating to ca. 8,200 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), were discovered at the Early Neolithic site of Cishan, northern China. The site contained >50,000 kg of grain crops stored in the storage pits (7–9). Until now, the importance of these findings has been constrained by limited taxonomic identification with regard to whether they are from foxtail millet (S. italica) or common millet (P. miliaceum), because the early reported S. italica identifications are not all accepted (4,9–12). This article presents the phytoliths, biomolecular records, and new radiocarbon dating from newly excavated grain crop storage pits at the Cishan site. Large modern reference collections are used to compare and contrast microfossil morphology and biomolecular components in different millets and related grass species (13). The renewed investigations show that common millet agriculture arose independently in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP. Our findings contribute to our knowledge of agricultural origins across the globe and have broader implications for understanding the development of human societies.

The Cishan site (36°34.511′ N, 114°06.720′ E) is located near the junction between the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain at an elevation of 260–270 m above sea level (Fig. 1). The archaeological site, containing a total of 88 storage pits with significant quantities (≈109 m³) of grain crop remains, was excavated from 1976 to 1978 (7, 8). Each storage pit included 0.3- to 2-m-thick grain crops, which were well preserved and found in situ in the 3- to 5-m-deep loess layer (9). All grain remains have been oxidized to ashes soon after they were exposed to air. Archaeological excavations also revealed the remains of houses and numerous millstones (Fig. S1), stone shovels, grind rollers, potteries, rich faunal remains, and plant assemblages including charred fruits of walnut (Juglans regia), hazel (Corylus heterophylla), and hackberry (Celtis bungeana) (7–9). Only 2 ¹⁴C dates of charcoal from previously excavated H145 and H48 storage pits yielded uncalibrated ages of 7355 ± 100 yr BP and 7235 ± 105 yr BP, respectively (8). These remains represent the earliest evidence for the significant use of dry-farming crop plants in the human diet in East Asia. They also suggest that by this time agriculture had already been relatively well developed here.

According to archeobotanical research, the early charred grains of common millet occurred during the initial stages of various Early Neolithic sites (Fig. 1), including Dadiwan (ca. 7.8–7.35 cal kyr BP) (21), Xinglonggou (ca. 8.0–7.5 cal kyr BP) (22), and Yuezhuang (ca. 7.87 cal kyr BP) (23) in North China, but foxtail millet was barely present during these stages. Lee et al. (24) have speculated that the Early Neolithic predominance of broomcorn over foxtail millet at Xinglonggou and Yuezhuang ca. 6000 cal B.C. might be a regional phenomenon, implying that broomcorn millet might have been domesticated earlier than foxtail millet. Our analytical results of both phytoliths and biomolecular components have established that the earliest cereal remains stored in the Cishan Neolithic sites, during ca. 10,300–8,700 cal yr BP, are not foxtail millet, but only common millet. After 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops gradually contained 0.4–2.8% foxtail millet. Our study also suggests that common millet was used as a staple food significantly earlier than foxtail millet in northern China. It provides direct evidence to show that, by 10,000 cal yr BP, the early people in northern China had developed various methods of maintenance and multiplication of millet seeds for the next generation, and had known how to store crops of staple food in secure, dry places of storage pits during the Early Neolithic epoch.

Common millet has the lowest water requirement among all grain crops; it is also a relatively short-season crop, and could grow well in poor soils (5, 6, 25). The geographical distribution of both foxtail millet and common millet in China (Fig. S4) shows that foxtail millet is more common in the semiwet eastern areas, and its optimal growth occurs at mean annual temperature (MAT) from 8 to 10 °C and mean annual precipitation (MAP) from 450 to 550 mm. However, common millet is more adapted to the drier interior areas, and its optimal growing conditions occur at MAT from 6 to 8 °C and MAP from 350 to 450 mm (5, 6). The origin and dispersal of millet agriculture is a key problem closely related to the history of human impact on the environment and transformation of natural vegetation.

Paleoenvironmental data from the Weinan section (26–29) (Fig. 1) in the southern part of the Loess Plateau between the Cishan and Dadiwan sites are crucial for understanding the early stage of the forager–cultivator transition. The early Holocene was a period of significant environmental change marked by dry climate conditions as inferred from sediment texture (26, 28), magnetic susceptibility (26, 28), pollen (27), phytoliths (28), and mollusk assemblages (29). These proxy records show an environmental transition from cold–dry (ca. 11,000–8,700 cal yr BP) to warm–wet (ca. 8,700–5,500 cal yr BP) conditions. Many lacustrine and loess records from the Chinese Loess Plateau to Central Asia also support the scenario of a dry climate during the early Holocene (30–34). Under the drier climate conditions, soil development was slowed, and the soil developed on the underlying older and coarser loess of the glacial period was poor in nutrients (28). This raises the possibility that common millet was more significant than foxtail millet in the early stages of food production in North China because it was more adaptable than foxtail millet to the dry condition prevailing during the early Holocene. The common millet cultivation may involve complex selection by natural forces and human activities, although no clear evidence has been documented in this region for the transitions from gathering to cultivation and/or from a wild ancestor to domesticated common millet.

…

References and source readings:

COWAN, C.Wesley., WATSON, Patty Jo; BENO, Nancy L., The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective p. 23-24).

D’Andrea, A. C. 1995. Later Jomon Subsistence in Northeastern Japan: New Evidence from Palaeoethnobotanical Studies. Asian Perspectives 34 (2): 195-227

This paper discusses prehistoric subsistence and the development of plant husbandry in northeastern Tohoku (northern Honshu). Archaeobotanical sampling was carried out at two sites in eastern Aomori Prefecture. Tominosawa is a Middle Jomon village site which produced a spectrum of nut and weedy plant species similar to that recovered from contemporary sites in southwestern Hokkaido. At the Kazahari site, pithouses from two phases of occupation were sampled for archaeobotanical remains: Tokoshinai IV (c. 1000 B.C.) and Fukurashima (c. 150 B.C.). The pithouse deposits produced evidence for Late Jomon rice, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet dating to the first millennium B.C. Sampling of later Fukurashima contexts produced evidence of rice, foxtail and broomcorn millet, Japanese barnyard millet, and hemp. These data demonstrate that rice and millets have been present in northeastern Tohoku since c. 1000 B.C.

NASU, Hiroo The Initial Form of Rice and Millet Cultivation during the Final Jomon-Yayoi Transition Era from the View of Archaeobotanical Weed Assemblages Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History Vol. 187 July 2014

Gremillion, Kristen J., People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 102-3

Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory, pp 117-132, Monographs in Archaeology, No. 4 Prehistory Press p. 121

Oelke, E.A., Oplinger, E.S., Putnam, D.H., Durgan, B.R., Doll, J.D. and Undersander, D.J. (1990) Millets, in Alternative Field Crops Manual)

Setaria introduction

A microscopic image of basil pollen, found at a third-century ruin in Nara prefecture, central Japan. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

Source: WSJ, March 2015
Researchers in Japan’s Nara prefecture said they have confirmed that the oldest basil pollen in the country originally came from China or the Korean peninsula, indicating that a trading society existed in the area then.

The pollen was found in 1991 in a ditch at the third-century Makimuku ruins, a national historic site thought to be one of the possible locations of the Yamataikoku kingdom, which was led by Queen Himiko. The kingdom’s exact location is still being debated.

Academics at the Research Center for Makimukugaku had compared the basil pollen in question to other types in Japan today, and traced its roots to those that grow in Southeast Asia.

…

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City
“The findings show that there was exchange between those in the area and other countries back then,” Teruhiko Hashimoto, a researcher at the center, told Japan Real Time Friday.

The pollen was found in a ditch which was a part of a drainage system that connected the central part of the town and its outskirts. Pollen from safflower has also been found there.

“Safflower was likely used for dyeing. Basil was probably used for medical purposes, but it isn’t clear. It was possibly used for a powerful figure,” Mr. Hashimoto said.

A new study could throw light on the origins of the migrants who brought rice culture to Japan and Korea…

New study suggests early rice farmers in three separate geographic locations independently domesticated rice.

Damien Dempsey/ Flickr/ Creative Commons

By Dennis Normile 2 November 2015 Science AAAS

Rice—one of the world’s most important crops—was domesticated more than once, according to a new study. The work could lead to a better understanding of how civilizations arose throughout Asia and whether they developed independently, or whether agricultural and cultural advances in one region were copied in others. It could also guide programs to improve the grain crop that more than half of the world’s population depends on.

There are four main varieties of rice: japonica, a short-grained rice grown in Japan, Korea, and eastern China; indica, a long-grained variety common in India, Pakistan, and most of Southeast Asia; aus, grown primarily in Bangladesh; and aromatic rice, which includes more exotic varieties such as India’s basmati and Thailand’s jasmine.

Scientists have primarily focused on indica and japonica because archaeological findings suggest both have a long history of cultivation. Researchers generally agree that humans living in what is now southern China domesticated japonica between 8200 and 13,500 years ago. The precise locale within southern China is still debated. But the spread of agriculture resulted in a more stable food supply that allowed hunter-gatherers to settle in villages with increasing populations and the more complex societies and cultures that led to the rise of Eastern civilizations.

Those claiming one domestication event believe indica emerged from crosses between japonica and wild species as rice cultivation spread through Asia. This hypothesis is strongly supported by Bin Han, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology in Shanghai, and colleagues in an October 2012 paper in Nature. In this scenario, aus and aromatic varieties emerged from later crosses.

Those arguing for two separate domestication events generally agree that japonica emerged in southern China, but they contend that indica was independently domesticated in a region straddling India and western Indochina.

The new analysis, from a group led by Terence Brown of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, adds a third and separate domestication locale, for aus, in a region stretching from central India to Bangladesh.

Interestingly, both the Han and Brown teams rely on the same genetic data: sequences from 446 samples of wild rice and over 1000 cultivated varieties. But just as two detectives examining a crime scene might think the clues point to different culprits, the two teams reach differing conclusions. Both analyses center on what are called domestication sweeps, regions of the genomes of cultivated rice varieties that differ from wild populations and that researchers believe were selected for by early farmers seeking to enhance desirable plant traits. These include regions that allow plants to grow vertically and thus more densely, as opposed to spreading over the ground, and to keep ripe grain on the stalk, instead of shedding it as most wild varieties do, a characteristic called shattering.

Han and his colleagues contend that that the domestication sweeps found in all cultivated Asian rice varieties are very similar and can be traced back to a single group of wild ancestors in southern China. But the Brown team says the genetic evidence indicates that the genes that proved advantageous for farming were present in many wild rice varieties widely distributed across the southern Asian continent. Early farmers in three separate geographic locations were all striving to select rice plants showing the same desirable traits. And that resulted in similar domestication sweeps appearing in three different varieties of cultivated rice. “Rice domestication was a multiregional process separately producing the indica, japonica, and aus types of rice,” the group writes online today in Nature Plants.

The methods are “rigorous and well substantiated,” says Susan McCouch, a rice geneticist at Cornell University. Brown and his colleagues “clearly demonstrate that the most parsimonious and coherent interpretation for the data is that there were at least three independent domestications of [rice] from well differentiated ancestral populations in Asia,” she says.

Han is sticking to his conclusions. The new paper is “definitely wrong with the data analysis,” he wrote in an email. He says his team will publish a detailed rebuttal shortly.

There are some sticky questions. Briana Gross, a plant geneticist at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, says there is convincing evidence that at least one of the major domestication sweeps—causing white grains—arose in japonica, and spread to other variety groups. If the three varieties were domesticated separately, she asks how did this trait get into all three?

Even McCouch acknowledges this latest finding is unlikely to be the last word. “I look forward to the many discussions this paper is likely to provide.

Below is the news article by Jiji Press via Japan Times

Ishigaki Island may harbor biggest Paleolithic ruins in East Asia

FIshhooks carved from shells from Sakitari Cave

World’s oldest fishhook found on Okinawa by Michael Price, Science Magazine Sep 16, 2016

There’s no telling what kinds of fishermen’s tales they told, but the early modern humans who lived on tiny Okinawa Island between mainland Japan and Taiwan nearly 30,000 years ago are the world’s oldest known anglers. Now, archaeologists have discovered the oldest known fishhooks in a limestone cave in the island’s interior, dating back nearly 23,000 years. The fishhooks, all carved from shells, were found in Sakitari Cave, which was occupied seasonally by fishermen taking advantage of the downstream migrations of crabs and freshwater snails. Unlike their mainland counterparts, who fashioned tools and beads out of shells and stones, the ancient people of Okinawa Island used shells almost exclusively. Japanese archaeologists excavating the cave discovered both a finished and an unfinished fishhook that had been carved and ground from sea snail shells. By radiocarbon dating pieces of charcoal found in the same layer as the fishhooks, the researchers determined the hooks were between 22,380 and 22,770 years old. Accounting for margin of error, that gives them an edge over similar fishhooks found in East Timor (between 23,000 and 16,000 years old) and New Ireland in Papua New Guinea (20,000 to 18,000 years old). The findings lend support to the idea that these early modern humans were more advanced with maritime technology than previously thought, and that they were capable of thriving on small, geographically isolated islands.

Further source references:

This finding possibly reverses the finding that fishing technology emerged from the south Island South East Asia, diffusing northwards along the Pacific Rim. The direction of diffusion may thus have been in the opposite direction. While archaeologists may have found the oldest fishhook artefacts and this is evidence of early fishing technology in the Pacific Rim region, the oldest known maritime fishers were previously believed to have been the nearby prehistoric Timor islanders. See Fishing techniques of the Jomon people may have diffused from fishermen of the Wallacea-Spice Islander / Sundaland-Sahul region

This finding would also be more concordant with Matsumoto’s GM study The origin of the Japanese race based on genetic markers of immunoglobin G  which found that none of the Japanese populations surveyed, including the Ainu or those from the Okinawa and southern islands shared the same GM marker pattern as southern Melanesian or Micronesian groups southern group, who showed a remarkably high frequency of the afb1b3 marker (excepting a very small component of the mainland Japanese in Osaka and Sendai that attributable to later admixing influxes from the continent). Other Japanese early fishing technology have shown similarities to prehistoric Northeast Pacific Rim fishing lithics.

日本人の起源に迫る「サキタリ洞人」の登場