Strangely enough, archaeologists have yet to turn up any evidence of battles or wars. Ten thousand years is of course a long time for uninterrupted peace but most experts believe that on the whole the Jomon people were hunter-gathering tribes because:
1. There have been no signs of walled settlements, defences, ditches or moats.
2. No finds of unusually large numbers of weapons such as lances, spears, bows and arrows.
3. They have found no evidence of human sacrifice nor masses of unceremonially dumped bodies.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that from time to time disputes broke out or acts of aggression occurred, beginning as early as the Initial Jomon period where remains of a male individual with a hip bone perforated by a bone point Kamikuroiwa Site has been found. Arrowheads were found in the bones and broken crania. There are many examples in the Final Jomon Period.
We have plenty of archaeological evidence indicating that war was not a significant or institutionalized activity among the Jomon people. For one thing, there are no weapons specifically designed to kill human beings. There are hunting tools like bow and arrow with stone projectiles – which, of course, can also kill humans – but there are no swords, no shields, no helmets, no armor or other combat gear, no pictures or sculptures recording battle scenes, no monuments to glorify warriors, no man-made structures that even remotely resemble a fortress or garrison, no walls that meander across the surface of the earth. Jomon people never developed the concept of a political state, nor did they have a concept of education. Children grew up by simply imitating the adults, persons who were at once self-reliant individuals and cooperative community members. Their economy did not require collaboration of more persons than there were in the local group, and the principal occasions for members of one group to meet those of others were centered around trade relations, intermarriage, and perhaps festivals. Their egalitarian society was based on matrilineal extended families within a tribal network (as is typical for many Neolithic cultures throughout the world). Agriculture had not developed beyond little gardens and so there was no need to fight over land or resources. They left behind the works of a rich material culture characterized by proliferatingly decorated pottery, terracotta sculptures, and stone circles. This was possible because they lived by what we call a “Paleolithic Rhythm”, meaning one or two days of work for living followed by two or three days of leisure. This in turn means that their natural environment was fairly rich in food and other basic resources to satisfy their needs and many of their wants (if people have to struggle hard for daily survival, they simply don’t create much of a culture).
according to Sahara Makoto there were some state like structures by the end of Jomon
There are signs of social stratification and existence of very large village settlements, large-scale industry, and since the Jomon’s existence has been one of the most enduring cultures in the world, one wonders if it might be more properly be called the Jomon civilization instead of merely the Jomon Culture. Sahara Makoto is according to Charles Keally, “There are about 6,000 to 7,000 archaeologists in Japan. Sahara Makoto is one of the top 10, one of the top 0.2% of Japanese archaeologists. …An elite academic, such as Sahara Makoto in archaeology, cannot be imitated and certainly cannot be faked. Elite academics are first of all elite humans. The “elite” is something that comes from the heart, and that reflects the heart as much as or more than the academic.” http://www.t-net.ne.jp/~keally/Reports/SIR2006/sir2006.html
it is important to note that we can speak of state-like structures/civilization when we consider only late Jomon (Kamegaoka period) while incipient/early and middle Jomon was not civilization.
Mr. Yokota begs the question a bit by substituting technology for intent. War can be satisfactorily waged with bare hands.
While it’s true that war can be waged with bare hands, it’s not likely because it would have been an inefficient method counter to the survival instinct. Since man had long been used to fashioning sophisticated weapons for catching game and defending himself from predators, it is likely that in warring with other humans, they would have employed the same sophisticated hunting technology available. Blow-darts have been found in southern Japan, harpoons in eastern and northern Japan, knives and arrows were available in the Jomon era, why would they not have used all of their offensive available weaponry in warfare, had there been wars?
Isn’t it Manatagwa man who is the first pre-Jomon fossil in the islands? 6 individuals with Jomon-like knocked teeth that show signs that they were cannabalized?
“but there are no swords, no shields, no helmets, no armor or other combat gear”
Well…of course not …metal had not been invented yet. There are mass graves of people who were murdered in Egypt long before walls or swords or armor.
The Minatogawa man is from the Paleolithic, and the knocked out teeth has no bearing upon cannibalism, but upon well documented rites of passage/group identity. That cannibalism occurred here probably can’t be ruled out for certain, but the literature suggests that most acts of cannibalism aren’t acts of war, but ritual acts of sacrifice or mortuary practices and I recall that one scientist dismissed the cannibalism in the case of Minatogawa because you should have been able to discern evidence such as signs of the bones having been scraped (as opposed to the two small hole punctures which could have other explanations). Judging from history, cannibalist acts by headhunting tribes were, however, common in this part of the world – eg., among the Taiwanese abor. tribes (Bunun), the Austronesians…the Iban, Dayaks, Bornean, Papua New Guinean and mostly Melanesian tribes(Korowai – K Y-DNA haplogroups). And since blowdarts have been found in the southernmost part of Japan and Japanese share some haplogroups in common with island or mainland Southeast Asia, it is not inconceivable that there may have been some low-level headhunting or cannibalism at work. Should one have to speculate on the provenance of such practices, I would look to the O3a3b-M7 (Japanese belong to the subclades) as a possible source of cultural diffusion of such practices. The existence of Mon-Khmer-Hmong close genetic ties was recently established: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024282?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+plosone%2FEvolutionaryBiology+%28PLoS+ONE+Alerts%3A+Evolutionary+Biology%29 . And the fiercest headhunters in the world are said to be from the Yunnan or Shan region, the Mon-Khmer headhunting tribes of the Va/Wa (see TIME report – http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2056076,00.html), Kachin peoples (although these also primarily belong to O1 haplogroups (which are not found in Japan). I would perhaps entertain the idea of new arrivals from SEA-of the Mon-Khmer tribes as a possible reason for the escalation of violence during the Yayoi period. Obayashi’s paper on the Myths of Wa points out a few similarities between the mythical traditions (cave/naga/primordial pair) of Japanese and those of the MK Wa/Shan tribes http://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/8490/24/HJsoc0030100430.pdf Those tribes would put up skulls alongside of animal sacrifices and libations to rice spirits. Overall, the genetic evidence puts the origins of the Japanese squarely with the northern Chinese, Northeast Asia, Buryats or Tibetans and of course the Koreans. While we’re on a roll in the speculation department, the Sumerians-Mesopotamians etc, Issedones and the Tibetans were supposed to have practised ritual cannibalism, the latter’s patriarchal family members eating the flesh of their elderly males and gilding the skull, so given the Tibetan-Japanese genetic connection, it might not be so far-fetched to believe that such similar practices existed in Japan. Nevertheless, hard evidence of cannibalism in Japan is still equivocal, scant or hard to discover, I have only seen one instance of severed heads lined up in a grave of a much later period
I can’t find any papers in English on rates of trauma in the Jomon period. Is there any data on that kind of thing, especially on trauma that might be violent?
I seriously doubt such data is available. Skeletal remains of the Jomon period are far too rare, given how far back it all was, and as the archaeologists are wont to explain … given how acidic the soil is in Japan. Even remains slightly nearer our own time such as Kofun era are pretty uncommon, with the rare (couple I think) finds from volcanic Pompei-like events that have been uncovered, and others from the cairns or passage tombs.