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A mid-Jomon stone circle dating to 3,500~2,800 years BP.

Some pottery finds were excavated on site(see photo above), as well as pit graves(see photo below).

Stone-lined graves

The tallest stones are smaller than the height of a man.  They resemble the stone circle in the Shaanxi area of China, rather than those of the Central Asian steppelands.

The sun can be seen setting over the peak of Mt. Hirugatake (1673 m.) on the Winter Solstice day, and which can be viewed from the line up of pillars in the stone circle. ‘Hiru’ means ‘daytime’, a cognate for which is ‘sun’.

To visit the site, follow the access map and see address below:

Chibi 3112-2 Oyama-chou, Machida city, Tokyo 194-0212
【住所】東京都町田市小山町３１１２－２及び３１１３－２
【地図】 see Google Map location page [A 5 minute walk from Tamasakai eiki/station

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More information and further reading from our website:

Secrets of the Stone Circles

Oshoro circle in the news

In addition to the above, a listing of stone circles around Japan can be found at the Megalithic.co.uk website’s page.

Figure 1  is particularly interesting as it suggests that the domestic dog in Japan is a mixture of two types, originating from the Middle East-through-Western Asian (Yunnan-Tibet) belt and also from the Southeast Asian regions, which would correspond closely to the dual structure theory of Japanese origins (and distribution of Jomon genes (haplogroups D and YAP+ (Y-DNA) and M7(mtDNA) vs. Yayoi or post-Yayoi-and-Kofun eras (haplogroups O2b/O3)

Map showing phylogenetic and geographical distribution of dog haplotypes (adapted from Table 1)

Origins of domestic dog in Southern East Asia is supported by analysis of Y-chromosome DNA

Z-L Ding et al., Heredity advance online publication 23 November 2011; doi: 10.1038/hdy.2011.114

Global mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data indicates that the dog originates from domestication of wolf in Asia South of Yangtze River (ASY), with minor genetic contributions from dog–wolf hybridisation elsewhere.

Two haplogroups were universally shared and included three haplotypes carried by 46% of all dogs, but two other haplogroups were primarily restricted to East Asia. Highest genetic diversity and virtually complete phylogenetic coverage was found within ASY. The 151 dogs were estimated to originate from 13–24 wolf founders, but there was no indication of post-domestication dog–wolf hybridisations. Thus, Y-chromosome and mtDNA data give strikingly similar pictures of dog phylogeography, most importantly that roughly 50% of the gene pools are shared universally but only ASY has nearly the full range of genetic diversity, such that the gene pools in all other regions may derive from ASY. This corroborates that ASY was the principal, and possibly sole region of wolf domestication, that a large number of wolves were domesticated, and that subsequent dog–wolf hybridisation contributed modestly to the dog gene pool.

NB: The abstract also notes that “there is yet no consensus concerning in which geographical region the domestication of wolf occurred. Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from dogs worldwide have strongly indicated the southern part of East Asia (dubbed Asia South of Yangtze River, ASY) (Savolainen et al., 2002; Pang et al., 2009; Klütsch and Savolainen, 2011). Archaeological data has instead indicated an origin from Europe or Southwest (SW) Asia or from multiple regions (Clutton-Brock, 1995), and a recent study of autosomal single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data suggested SW Asia as the major source of genetic diversity for dogs (Vonholdt et al., 2010). However, both the archaeological- and the autosomal-SNP datasets suffer from geographical bias, in that they almost totally lack data from ASY (Klütsch and Savolainen, 2011).”

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See also earlier references and source readings:

Excerpts from a NY Times article highlighted the findings of research that concluded that dogs were first domesticated about 15,000 years ago  in the Middle East. This article’s findings contradicted initial conclusions of early research that found that dogs were first domesticated in the East Asia.

New Finding Puts Origins of Dogs in Middle East By Nicholas Wade (NY Times March 17, 2010)

“Borrowing methods developed to study the genetics of human disease, researchers have concluded that dogs were probably first domesticated from wolves somewhere in the Middle East, in contrast to an earlier survey suggesting dogs originated in East Asia.

A research team led by Bridgett M. vonHoldt and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, has analyzed a large collection of wolf and dog genomes from around the world. Scanning for similar runs of DNA, the researchers found that the Middle East was where wolf and dog genomes were most similar, although there was another area of overlap between East Asian wolves and dogs. Wolves were probably first domesticated in the Middle East, but after dogs had spread to East Asia there was a crossbreeding that injected more wolf genes into the dog genome, the researchers conclude in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

The archaeological evidence supports this idea, since some of the earliest dog remains have been found in the Middle East, dating from 12,000 years ago. The only earlier doglike remains occur in Belgium, at a site 31,000 years old, and in western Russia from 15,000 years ago. Several thousand years later, in the first settled communities that began to appear in the Middle East 15,000 years ago, people began intervening in the breeding patterns of their camp followers, turning them into the first proto-dogs. One of the features they selected was small size, continuing the downsizing of the wolf body plan. “I think a long history such as that would explain how a large carnivore, which can eat you, eventually became stably incorporated in human society,” Dr. Wayne said.

Dr. Wayne was surprised to find that all the herding dogs grouped together, as did all the sight hounds and the scent hounds, making a perfect match between dogs’ various functions and the branches on the genetic tree. “I thought there would be many ways to build a herding dog and that they’d come from all over the tree, but there are not,” Dr. Wayne said.

An earlier survey of dog origins, based on a small genetic element known as mitochondrial DNA, concluded that dogs had been domesticated, probably just once, in East Asia. The author of the survey, Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, said he was not convinced by the new report for several reasons, including that it did not sample dogs in East Asia from south of the Yangtze, the region where the diversity of mitochondrial DNA is highest. Also archaeologists in China have been less interested in distinguishing dog and wolf remains, he said.

Two other experts on dog genetics, Carlos Driscoll and Stephen O’Brien, of the National Cancer Institute, said they believed that Dr. Wayne’s team had made a convincing case. “I think they have nailed the locale of dog domestication to the Middle East,” Dr. O’Brien said in an e-mail message from Siberia, where he is attending a tiger management workshop.

Dog domestication and human settlement occurred at the same time, some 15,000 years ago, raising the possibility that dogs may have had a complex impact on the structure of human society. Dogs could have been the sentries that let hunter gatherers settle without fear of surprise attack. They may also have been the first major item of inherited wealth, preceding cattle, and so could have laid the foundations for the gradations of wealth and social hierarchy that differentiated settled groups from the egalitarianism of their hunter-gatherer predecessors. Notions of inheritance and ownership, Dr. Driscoll said, may have been prompted by the first dogs to permeate human society, laying an unexpected track from wolf to wealth.”

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Further reading and source links:

MtDNA data indicates a single origin for dogs south of Yangtze River, less than 16,300 years ago, from numerous wolves, Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp19

Dogs were probably domesticated in the Near East rather the East Asia (Dienekes’ Anthropology pub. date Mar 18, 2010 - retr. Feb 5, 2011)

Wolves were domesticated in southeast Asia (Past Horizon Blog)

Dogs First Tamed in China — To Be Food? (National Geographic News)

The cross-section of a mound used as an embankment of a pond is pictured in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, on Dec. 5, 2011. The white poles in the rear of the photo show where a large building used to be located. (Mainichi)

KASHIHARA, Nara — The remains of what is believed to be part of a pond described in ancient history and poetry books have been found here, city authorities have announced.

The Kashihara Municipal Board of Education announced Dec. 15 that the late 6th-century remains of what is likely an embankment of the ancient “Iware Pond” have been found in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture. The Iware Pond is mentioned in the history book “Nihon Shoki” (Chronicles of Japan), and the Nara-period poetry anthology “Manyoshu” (Collection of Myriad Leaves). The location of the pond had previously been unknown.

The remains of a large structure were also found on the embankment site, which some researchers believe to have been a facility for Emperor Yomei (died 587), the father of Prince Shotoku (574-622). The facility, called “Iware no ikenobe no namitsuki no miya,” is described in the Chronicles of Japan as having stood by the pond.

The embankment was apparently part of an artificial pond built by damming up a river, and is the oldest known pond of its kind in Japan, according to city officials.

Researchers found a ridge spanning some 300 meters from east to west and 20 to 55 meters wide at the site. An 81-meter-long stretch of the ridge’s eastern edge was found to have built up from a lower level. Researchers believe that the entire ridge served as a 3- to 4-meter-high embankment to dam the river. The pond’s area is estimated to have been some 87,500 square meters.

It is believed that the embankment, as well as the nearby building and earthenware excavated around the area, were all built and manufactured in the 6th century, making the Iware Pond older than the Sayama Pond in Osakasayama, Osaka Prefecture, which dates back to the early 7th century. The Sayama Pond was previously believed to be the oldest known pond of its kind.

At the western edge of the embankment site stands a monument, on which an ancient poem is inscribed, reading, “This is my last chance to see the ducks singing in the Iware Pond as I am destined to die today.” The poem is said to have been written in tears by Otsu-no-miko, the son of Emperor Tenmu, on the embankment before the former was executed for treason in 686.

The raid by the 47 “ronin” is enacted every year in Ako, Hyogo Prefecture, the home of Asano Takuminokami, and other locations across the nation. (Yoshiaki Arai)

A woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794-1832) depicting the raid by the 47 “ronin.” (Satoshi Akahane)

Source: “Chushingura” may be 97% fiction, but it ranks highly for aesthetic sensitivity (Asahi, Dec 13, 2011)

It’s that time of year again for “Chushingura,” a fictionalized telling of a classic tale of revenge that ranks among the most familiar of all stories in Japan. Even though we know the story from start to finish, it has managed to endure and fascinate for more than 300 years.

To find out the historical basis and popular appeal of Chushingura, read this Introduction to Chushingura as well as “Chushingura: Loyalty that never goes out of style“. Read more of the article at AJW.

Other good resources include: Chushingura and the Samurai Tradition; Chushingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (book in print) by Izumo Takeda et al.

A particular recommended resource lesson guide for studying Chushingura is the EDsitement lesson, “Hamlet meets Chushingura: Traditions of the Revenge Tragedy“

The text of Kanadehon Chushingura by Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku, and Namiki Senryu may be read online here.

You may take tours of Japanese woodblock and other art on Chushingura or watch online the trailer (in Japanese only) for Kanadehon Chushingura by the Japan Arts Council here.

Earthenware found in Kyoto's Nakagyo Ward is seen in this photo taken on Dec. 8. (Mainichi)

KYOTO — The Kyoto City Archaeological Research Institute said it has unearthed earthenware in an excavation site, which is believed to be the remains of a residence for Fujiwara no Yoshimi, a prominent politician and court noble in the Heian period (794 to 1185).

The earthenware found is inscribed with black ink as “Sanjo-in Tsuridono Takatsuki” (Sanjo residence, palatial-style ‘tsuridono’ architecture, pedestal serving bowl). The Chinese character “in” in the inscription means a “great residence.” The research institute said the Chinese characters such as “in” inscribed on the pottery support the theory that the remains where it was unearthed were those for the residence of Fujiwara no Yoshimi. It was the first time that the location of a residence of an aristocrat within Heiankyo (present-day Kyoto) had been confirmed.

The earthenware was discovered when research was conducted on the building of a new campus for Bukkyo University there. Old documents and other materials had suggested that the residence of Fujiwara no Yoshimi could be in that area, but there were also different views. Fujiwara no Yoshimi was a younger brother of Fujiwara no Yoshifusa, who became the first regent from outside the Imperial Family. Old documents show that Empress Dowager Nobuko, Yoshimi’s elder sister, had stayed at the residence for about one year from 859.

The Chinese character “in” refers to a structure where the Imperial Family stayed, and the pedestal serving bowl, which was inscribed in Chinese characters, is believed to have been used in a traditional palatial-style “tsuridono” architecture overhanging the pond. The remains of the pond and the “tsuridono” architecture were also found along with ceramics imported from China.

Nishisanjodai, the name of Fujiwara no Yoshimi’s residence, was also called “Hyakkatei” (One hundred flower pavilion) where Emperor Seiwa is believed to have hosted a cherry flower banquet. Yoshihiro Marukawa, a senior official of the research institute said, “It becomes clear that (Fujiwara no Yoshimi) had major power. Based on the analysis of the artifacts, it is believed to have been built in the latter half of the 9th century, which coincided with the declining period of the Yoshimi family.”

Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

A detail from “The Tale of Gio,” one of the hand scrolls in “Storytelling in Japanese Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Roberta Smith   (NY Times, Dec 1, 2011)

“Storytelling in Japanese Art,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a captivating combination of show and tell, read and look. Curatorially speaking, the exhibition takes us gently in hand and, through text panels, captions and diagrams, reveals the narrative side of Japanese art with memorable clarity.

It has been organized by Masako Watanabe, a senior research associate in the Met’s Asian art department, and while installed in the museum’s Japanese permanent-collection galleries, it is a temporary show full of significant loans. Illuminating the tales played out in a lavish assortment of hand scrolls, hanging scrolls, screens and books, the exhibition, with its explications and elucidations, gives didacticism a good name. It deserves return visits, especially for its second rotation, starting Feb. 8, when, due to fragility, several hand scrolls will be wound to different scenes and five screens will be replaced by others.

The show contains more than 100 works that span mostly from the 13th to the 19th centuries. At its core are some 20 hand scrolls, or emaki, an ingenious medium evolved from the illustrated sutras that began landing in Japan from China in the eighth century as part of the spread of Buddhism. While full of wonderfully observed natural details, Japanese hand scrolls, unlike their Chinese precedents, developed less as vehicles for pure landscape than as stages on which to unfurl human dramas of all kinds, in something like real time and space. In the hands of Japanese artists the scrolls were tantamount to primitive films. Their fluidity, emotional expressiveness and sense of action and lived experience give them an uncannily contemporary immediacy.

This is established at the start of the show with a masterpiece: the five scrolls known as the “Illustrated Legends of the Kitano Tenjin Shrine,” a sublime example of Chinese-style ink painting highlighted with translucent washes of color from the 13th-century Kamakura period. Acquired in 1925, these scrolls constitute one of the Met’s great paintings, but they have never been exhibited together before, and this alone makes “Storytelling in Japanese Art” a must-see.

With seductive intimacy the scrolls recount the life and turbulent afterlife of Sugawara Michizane, a ninth-century poet-statesman said to have died of a broken heart after being unjustly slandered. The tale includes the destruction unleashed by his angry spirit (floods, fire, shattered buildings, some of it delivered by a magnificent black-clad thunder god) and the dangerous journey to hell and back by Nichizo, an intrepid acolyte sent to divine how to placate Michizane. (It takes a temple.)

Nichizo’s pictorially breathtaking odyssey involves help from both monks and demons, a pause to pray in a cave (dragon notwithstanding) and braving a fabulous fire-breathing monster with eight heads and nine tails who guards the fiery furnace that is hell. All this is played out in a sparsely limned landscape whose mutations from gentle to spiked to lunar make it a star in its own right.

A similarly spare, evocative landscape also figures in “A Long Tale for an Autumn Night,” another ink-and-color painting from around 1400. Its anguished plot concerns an aspiring monk’s love for a beautiful boy and ends, as this genre usually did, with the death of the boy, who is revealed to be a manifestation of the bodhisattva Kannon.

“Storytelling in Japanese Art” is not a historically thorough survey. Its main goal is to follow the mingling of different narrative and pictorial genres and styles. Its arrangement is as much thematic as chronological, with groupings of different works from different centuries attesting to the continuing attraction that certain stories exerted on the imagination.

In the section devoted to “The Tale of Genji,” the 11th-century novel that is among Japan’s greatest contributions to world literature, for example, modest books and hand scrolls are grouped around a pair of Edo-period screens by the 16th-century master Kano Soshu like small craft around a magnificent ocean liner.

And early in the exhibition En No Gyoja, the legendary founder of a mountain-based asceticism combining aspects of Shinto and Buddhist beliefs known as Shugendo, moves through several mediums, including intentional hanging scrolls and what might be called accidental ones, those made from fragments excised from hand scrolls and mounted on textiles, as well as intact hand scrolls. He is especially appealing in a Kamakura-period hand scroll fragment about the history of the Jin’oji Temple. It shows him in a garden with low-flying clouds conversing with a local deity, while a visiting Korean god alights on the top of a pine tree, causing one of En No Gyoja’s loyal servant-demons to fall to his knees.

From there the show traces the pictorial life of various cherished narratives from medium to medium. Sacred tales about building temples or the spiritual evolution of semidivine beings give way to celebrations of rulers’ lives, epic military battles or endlessly triangulating romances whose female participants usually pay the price. In the late-16th-century hand scroll “The Tale of Gio” the title character, a dancer, generously allows another woman to perform for her patron in a green-carpeted pavilion, and of course her life ends up in ruins. Here, as in later works throughout the show, free-hand ink painting gives way to stiffer figuration and bright opaque colors, and open landscapes are more and more punctuated by steeply tilted buildings whose sumptuous interiors become central.

Partly because of the exhibition’s placement in the permanent-collection galleries, Ms. Watanabe has supplemented the scrolls, books and screens with works in other mediums. A lacquer box and a kimono decorated with images of books suggest the high value placed on literature, and lacquer stirrups and saddles are placed near several screens recounting historic battles that had assumed mythic status in Japanese culture. They teem with mounted soldiers and archers and, according to the label, can depict up to 80 separate episodes.

If you wonder what a six-legged red-lacquer storage case is doing in the show, look no farther than the pair of painted screens next to it. On one a nearly identical case is boldly outlined in ink. According to the label a brave samurai cut off the arm of a wicked demon and hid it the case, until the demon returned in the guise of the warrior’s mother and tricked him out it. On the second screen the demon, rendered larger than life with exaggerated vigor, is shown speeding away, clutching her lividly red arm. The work’s creator, Shibata Zeshin (1807-91), was known internationally during his lifetime as a master of lacquer; a nearby preparatory study for the image is just as large, but less strained.

The same storage case, this time in black, appears in the show’s final gallery in “Night Parade of 100 Demons,” where it is being torn apart by one of the hand scroll’s wonderfully grotesque creatures in an effort to free several more of his ilk trapped inside. This final gallery is dominated by depictions of anthropomorphized animals, among them the frolicking creatures on a 12th-century hanging scroll that was excised from a set of 12th-century hand scrolls revered in Japan as one of the starting points of manga. Also here is “The Tale of Mice,” one of several impressive loans from the New York Public Library, with its cast of well-dressed white rodents. One wonders if Art Spiegelman knew of its existence when he undertook “Maus,” his graphic novel of Jewish mice and Nazi cats.

“The Tale of Mice” is one of many points in “Storytelling in Japanese Art” where you may find yourself wondering if Japan, despite its small size, has contributed far more than its share to today’s popular culture. There is no hard science by which to arrive at a definitive answer. Still, this fascinating show reverberates with that tantalizing possibility.

See more photos at “Storytelling in Japanese Art“

“Storytelling in Japanese Art” is on view through May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org.

Source: NY Times

The discovery was made at the Asukakyo Enchi garden, which dates back more than 1,300 years, in Asuka Village in Nara Prefecture. The garden was discovered in 1999.

The researchers from the prefecture’s archaeological institute have excavated one of 2 ponds in the garden. They recently found huge boulders piled up in more than 3 tiers on the eastern slope of the pond.

The boulders were arranged over a distance of 30 meters. The largest, weighing about 2 tons, was 1.5 meters wide and one-meter high.

The archaeologists say it is the first time that such huge boulders have been found used for ancient ponds.

An expert says that builders probably used the massive stones to show off the power of the emperor.

Source: NHK, November 29, 2011

Further reading:

飛鳥京跡

Reviewing the ruins of the Asuka-kyo and Fujiwara-kyo, the first imperial capitals of Japan 

TOKYO ”Noh Masks and Costumes from the Mitsui Collection”

MITSUI MEMORIAL MUSEUM

(Japan Times, Friday, Nov. 25, 2011)

Showing approximately 100 noh masks and costumes drawn from the Mitsui Memorial Museum’s collections, this exhibition was curated to present the “profound and subtle beauty” of a uniquely Japanese art form.

“Okina (Hakushiki-jyo),” an Important Cultural Property attributed to Nikko (Muromachi Period, 1392-1573). MITSUI MEMORIALMUSEUM; KANEI MASAMICHI PHOTO

Master mask-carver Kazumichi Hashioka’s donation of eight masks and 100 volumes of Genna-uzuki-bon noh chants, are particularly prized pieces in the museum’s collection. And with 54 masks from the Important Cultural Property ex-Kongo Family collection, along with noh costumes, instruments and song books from the Mitsui family, this is a chance to admire important artifacts representing departed spirits, personified deities, and vengeful demons, which are being collectively displayed for the first time; till Jan. 28.

Mitsui Memorial Museum; (03) 5777-8600; Nihonbashi Muromachi Building, 7F, 2-1-1 Chuo-ku, Tokyo; 1-min walk from Exit A7 of Mitsukoshimae Station, Ginza Line. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. ¥1,000. Closed Mon. and Dec. 26-Jan. 2, Jan 10; open Jan. 9. www.mitsui-museum.jp/english/english.html.

A piece of human rib bone dating back some 24,000 years is pictured at the University of the Ryukyus on Nov. 10. (Mainichi)

Japan’s oldest known human remains found in cave on Ishigaki Island  (Mainichi, Nov 10, 2011)

Japan’s oldest known human remains have been found in cave remains on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture, a researcher has announced.

Minoru Yoneda, associate professor at the University of Tokyo, confirmed the human remains dating back some 24,000 years after inspecting human bones excavated at the Shirahosaonetabaru cave remains in the city of Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture.

The ancient cave is also home to approximately 20,000-year-old human remains dating back to the Paleolithic Period — previously the nation’s oldest known traces of human existence. A past survey had found that one of the six pieces of human bones found at the site dated back some 20,000 years through direct measurement of radioactive carbon of collagen extracted from those bones. However, researchers had been unable to identify the geological layer that hosted the human remains.

Yoneda analyzed some 25 pieces of human bones that were freshly excavated from the 20,000 to 24,000-year-old bottom layer and other locations at the cave remains before 2010. By using radiocarbon dating, one of the rib bone pieces excavated from the bottom layer has turned out to be about 24,000 years old, while three other bone fragments proved to be some 20,000 years old.

On mainland Japan, which has abundant acid soil, human remains found in Hamakita (present-day Hamamatsu), Shizuoka Prefecture — which have been confirmed to date back some 18,000 years through the use of radiocarbon dating — are the only known human bones from the Paleolithic Period.

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Researchers: Human bone in Okinawa is 24,000 years old

(Asahi, Nov 11 2011)

ISHIGAKI, Okinawa Prefecture–A 24,000-year-old human bone fragment discovered in a cave on this island is the oldest among human remains found in Japan, researchers said Nov. 10.

The Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum said the piece of bone, excavated from the Shirahosaonetabaru cave, is believed to be part of a rib.

Using direct dating, the researchers concluded that the fragment is 4,000 years older than the previous oldest find in Japan.

Archaeologists at the University of Tokyo are using radiocarbon dating

to determine the age of the fragment from the Paleolithic Period (2 million B.C.-10,000 B.C.)

The researchers are studying about 300 pieces of human bone as well as animal bones, including one from a wild boar, found in the cave. The cave is located in a construction site for a new airport.

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24,000 year old human bone found in Japan (Tokyo Times, Nov 13, 2011)

Researchers have found a 24,000-year old human bone from a cave ruin in Ishigaki island in Okinawa Prefecture, believed to be the oldest human remains identified in Japan.

The human bone was excavated from a Shirahosaonetabaru cave which the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum suggested was a fragment from a human rib.

Using radiocarbon dating or analysis, archaeologists at the University of Tokyo determined the age of the bone which is said to be 4,000 older than the previous human bone found in the cave ruin in Naha, Okinawa.

“These human remains are among the oldest found so far in Japan, after earlier finding of a portion estimated in 32,000 years ago in a cave in Naha, Okinawa,” the researchers announced on Thursday.

The research team led by Minoru Yoneda, an anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Tokyo, examined about 25 fragments of human bones taken from the 20,000 to 24,000-year-old bottom layer and other locations at the cave. The primeval cave is known to be an abode for about 20,000-year-old human remains traced to belong to the Paleolithic Period.

The Japanese researchers said that discovery of human bones could help ascertain data on Japanese ancestors.

From Zusetsu Nihonshi (Graphics of Japanese history) published by Keiryusha

Source: The Yomiuri Shimbun

NAGASAKI–The wreck of a military ship, believed to be from the Yuan Dynasty fleet that tried to invade Japan in 1281, has been found in Imari Bay off Matsuura, Nagasaki Prefecture.

Discovered near Takashima island, the ship is believed to have gone down during the Battle of Koan in 1281, according to Prof. Yoshifumi Ikeda, an archaeologist with University of the Ryukus. Ikeda leads a team searching for ships that sank during failed Mongol invasions.

Pieces of Yuan ships, anchor stones, cannonballs and other relics had been found around the island, but the latest discovery was the first time a nearly intact ship’s hull has been excavated.

Part of the ship’s hull was found last year about one meter below the seabed, about 20 meters to 25 meters underwater, south of the island.

The team of researchers began a full excavation project on Sept. 30 this year.

The team discovered a keel, 15 meters long and 50 centimeters wide, and many wood planks on both sides of it.

The planks were 15 centimeters to 25 centimeters wide, 10 centimeters thick and one meter to 10 meters long, and are thought to be parts of the ship’s hull. Both sides of the keel were painted gray.

Pieces of Chinese ceramics were found above parts of the hull, and bricks unique to China were also found. Based on this evidence, the team concluded the ship was from the Yuan fleet.

Based on pieces connected to the keel, the team estimated the ship was at least 20 meters long.

In the Kamakura period (1192-1333), Kublai Khan of China’s Yuan Dynasty twice dispatched joint fleets with Goryeo, a kingdom on the Korean Peninsula, in an attempt to subjugate Japan.

Following the Battle of Bunei in 1274, the Battle of Koan saw a fleet of about 4,400 ships carrying 140,000 soldiers arrive in Japan. There were some fights with samurai in the Hakata district, today part of Fukuoka Prefecture, and other locations.

The ships later gathered near Takashima island where they were hit by a storm, which the Japanese later dubbed kamikaze (divine winds), and most of the ships sank, according to Japanese historical records.

There are cases of dugout canoes dating back to the Jomon (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.) and Yayoi (ca 300 B.C.-ca 300 A.D.) periods being discovered in Japan.

But this is the first discovery of a nearly complete, pre-medieval wooden ship with its original shape mostly unchanged.

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Courtesy of University of the Ryukyus' archaeology research laboratory

Findings include ceramics, shell

Although the mast and upper structures of the ship are missing in photographs the research team unveiled Monday, some outer planks of the ship’s hull can be seen arrayed around both sides of ship’s keel.

About 100 pieces of Chinese ceramics and at least 300 bricks, believed to have been ballast, were found scattered around the site. The pieces include what Japanese called tetsuhau, a kind of explosive shell used by Yuan Dynasty soldiers. Tetsuhau are depicted on a Japanese picture scroll made in the late Kamakura period.

Remains of the ship’s ribs and bulkheads also were also confirmed.

Ikeda told reporters at the Nagasaki prefectural government office there is no doubt the ship belonged to the Yuan Dynasty. “We are ready to continue our research. We’d like to consider raising the ship, too,” the archaeologist said.