Linguistic and cultural evidence, along with appearance of portions of the population have shown the likelihood of various origins of the Japanese people and links to Native Americans. As far as physical appearance is concerned, the Ainu population of northern Japan more closely resembles the unique looking and more ancient Jomon ancestors and some of the Native Americans. The main population of Japan resembles other Asians, particularly Koreans and Chinese, and their Yayoi ancestors.
The Ancient Remnants of the Japanese
The Japanese are considered today to have been a mixture of the ancient hunter-gatherer Jomon culture and the later rice agriculture Yayoi culture. These two major ancestral groups came to Japan over different routes at different times.
The Jomon ancestors were an Ice Age culture that may have come to the Northern and Southern Japanese archipelago from ca. 20,000 B.C.E., when there was an ice bridge from Siberia to Northern Japan. The Yayoi people are thought to have arrived about 2300 B.C.E. along a bridge from Korea and the Asian mainland.
Another theory sees the possible arrival of humans to Japan from about 100,000 years ago where evidence of ancient elephants has been found in Nagano, though no remnants of humans were found in conjunction with the elephants. Humans in the Hokkaido region around 40,000 B.C.E. are thought to have hunted wooly mammoths and from their dental morphology are thought to have come from northeastern Asia.
Dental morphology also points to a group coming from southeast Asia to Okinawa around 12,000 years ago. In the Ryukyu Islands, human skeletons have been dated to 32,000 years ago.
About 15,000 years ago, three separate land bridges brought three different populations to Japan, one in the south connecting Taiwan with the Ryukyu Islands and Kyushu. Another connected Korea with Kyushu, and the last connected Siberia to Sakhalin Island and Hokkaido.
There are thus three main ancestral groups of the Japanese, those of the Ryukyu Islanders of Okinawa in southern Japan, the Ainu of Hokkaido in northern Japan, and the main group of the Japanese in the central area of Japan.
The Genetic Evidence of Japanese Populations
The genetic evidence, however, is a much clearer demonstration of the several origins of the Japanese. The majority of Japanese men are found to have the haplogroup O Y-chromosome (54% of the male population) traced to Han Chinese or Korean origin. The next largest population of men is found to have haplogroup D2 (36%) which is unusual because it is only found in Japan. Haplogroup C1 (4%) is also unique to Japan.
More indications of ancient migration from Siberia are found in the 0.1% of the modern Japanese population having haplogroup HV. HV is a very old lineage (ca. 40,000 years old) found in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Siberia. The main point of entry from Asia to Japan would probably have been Xinjiang, where about half of the DNA is of European origin.
Recent Jomon Skeleton Testing and Native American Link
Recently, 16 skeletons from the Jomon or pre-Jomon period were recovered and the DNA tested. The skeletons were discovered at the Funadomari site in Hokkaido Japan. MtDNA haplogroups (DNA inherited through the mothers) D1a, M7a, and N9b were found in these individuals, with N9b being by far the most predominant. The N9b and M7a presence proved that these haplogroups were the pre-Jomon contribution to the modern Japanese gene pool.
Modern Japanese population groups, including the Ainu do not share the same frequencies as found in the Funadomari samples, probably due to the small size of the sample and the close consanguinity among the members of the site.
The MtDNA haplogroup D1 genetic evidence proves the relationship of ancient or pre-Jomon Japanese to the ancient Native American populations. Haplogroup D1 is not generally found among Asians, but is commonly found in Native Americans. It is thus evident that both the pre-Jomon and Native American populations migrated from Siberia.
Resources:
Diamond, Jared. “Japanese Roots (Human Origins/Human Evolution,” DiscoverMagazine.com (June 1, 1998) Accessed 5 May 2010
Hays, Jeffrey. First Japanese and the Jomon and Yayoi People (2009) Accessed 5 May 2010
“The Origins of the Japanese People.” Wa-pedia. Accessed 5 May 2010
Paula I. Nielson - Paula I. Nielson, Ph.D., holds credentials and interests in anthropology, archaeology, religion, the Middle East and Asia.
