Modern Japanese are descendants of three cultures
Today's Japanese people are descendants of three different cultures. Scientists were able to establish this thanks to genetic analysis, according to Science Advanced.
It is believed that humans first appeared on the Japanese islands 38 thousand years ago. But the rapid cultural development began much later, about 3 thousand years ago. At that time, the tribes switched from gathering to agriculture, mastered the technology of growing rice.
According to scientists, the ancestors of modern Japanese were two peoples: the indigenous hunter-gatherer-fishermen Jomon and later farmers Yayoi. The former inhabited the archipelago 16 – 3 thousand years ago, the latter migrated from Asia in 900 BC – 300 AD.
A new study has helped identify another group of ancestors. Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have sequenced 12 genomes of people who lived in Japan at different times. It turned out that during the imperial period of Kofun from 300 to 710 AD. BC, when political centralization arose in Japan, a certain people from East Asia arrived in the country.
“We have a completely new tripartite model of Japanese genomic origin,” the authors noted.
Genetic analysis showed that at the end of the last ice age (15-16 thousand years ago), Japan turned into an isolated land area. The rising sea cut it off from the Korean Peninsula, destroying the land isthmus.
Representatives of the Jomon people have lived in solitude for thousands of years, creating their own unique culture. Their total population did not exceed 1000 people.
In the 900s BC, the Yayoi people appeared on the islands. As a rule, the people who came displace the aborigines, but in this case this did not happen – the two cultures began to cooperate with each other, sharing the secrets of technology. Since that time, agriculture and rice cultivation began to actively develop in Japan.
Scientists could not say who the representatives of the third group were. But they concluded that they also contributed to the country's genetic and cultural diversity, which was followed by rapid cultural transformation.
Earlier it became known that geneticists estimated the number of closely related marriages in ancient tribes. It turned out that modern people are more likely to enter into closely related relationships.
