You will hear a lecture about some archaeological research. First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.
So far in these lectures, we've been looking at evidence of human migration across the African continent and into mainland Asia. Today, let's see what evidence we have for Stone Age man, specifically in Japan. The particular evidence, as you will see, has had a considerable impact on the beliefs of both archaeologists and anthropologists.
Let's start by mentioning the man who first discovered this evidence. In 1877, an American zoologist, Edward S. Morse, went looking for shells and fossils in Japan at Omori, an area which had once been coastal. But he also ended up discovering fragments of pottery.
On the fragments, there was a pattern that was unlike anything archaeologists had seen before. At the time, it was thought that this pottery was no more than a few thousand years old. Then, in the 1960s, archaeologists were carrying out excavations in Fukui Cave in the Japanese island of Kyushu, and they found more examples of this pottery.
They could now take advantage of carbon dating technology, and to their amazement, it showed that the pottery had been made around 12,000 years ago. That's 10,000 B.C. This pottery has become known as Jomon pottery, and the period of time during which it was produced has been named the Jomon period. How did the people who made this pottery find their way to Japan in the first place? During the Ice Age, somewhere between 35,000 B.C. and 30,000 B.C., the Japanese islands as we know them today were connected to the eastern and southeastern Asian mainland.
So you could cross from one large landmass to another over something that we call a land bridge. That's how Stone Age humans crossed into Japan. But when temperatures finally rose, this led to some major environmental changes.
Japan had been covered in frozen earth, but now, with the warmer climate, forests grew. With this new habitat, smaller animals began to appear, such as Sika deer, still found in Japan today, as well as wild boar and bear. Where once people had used spears to attack the elephants and giant deer that they depended upon for food, for hunting the new, smaller animals, they replaced these weapons with arrows and developed skills in archery.
The new habitat also meant that they had a new range of foodstuffs at their disposal, which they could collect—a greater variety of plants, nuts, and fish. Now, this way of life continued for thousands of years. But then we come to the early Jomon period, which was from about 10,500 BC to 8,000 BC.
Well, according to previous archaeological theory, the people in these very early societies didn't make or use pottery, because they were hunters who were constantly on the move, following the animals, and they wouldn't have been able to carry it around with them. But it now appears that the early Jomon people actually seemed to have invented pottery-making while they were still getting their food in this way, long before they had begun to rely on agriculture as a source of food. Later, in the Jomon period 8,000 BC to 5,000 BC, we find larger pots that were used to boil vegetable-type food to make it edible, which suggests that the Jomon people had become at least semi-sedentary— in other words, were remaining in the same place for a while.
For a long time they had lived in caves, but now we find evidence of villages. One of these has been found to the southwest of Mount Fuji. There is evidence of ten round buildings.
The Jomon dug shallow pits in the ground and used wooden posts to hold up the roof. Each of these houses had its own two stones— a flat one and a grinding one for breaking down the nuts and other hard vegetable-type foodstuffs the Jomon survived on at this time. This more sedentary culture led to important population increases.
By the end of the Jomon period, we see the influence of migration from northern Asia and the southern Pacific. For example, the newcomers brought with them technological developments in textiles and glassmaking, and they also introduced their marriage rituals. We also have evidence that the migrants influenced local architectural styles and methods of construction.
At this time, the Jomon people also began to cultivate food, and in particular rice— at last, a real step towards the practice of agriculture. It is remarkable that this unique culture survived for so long without it. You have ten minutes to transfer your answers to the listening answer sheet.
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