Out of Sunda? Provenance of the Jōmon Japanese (1)

Out of Sunda? Provenance of the Jōmon Japanese (1)

Edwina Palmer

University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

This discussion attempts to reconcile various seemingly contradictory research results regarding the origins of Jōmon Japanese. The focus is on testing Oppenheimer’s theory of Holocene outmigration from the former continent of Sundaland in present-day Southeast Asia against the evidence relating to Jōmon Japan and the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis for Austronesian language dispersal. It is argued here that postglacial flooding of Sundaland prompted some former inhabitants to migrate from around ten or eleven thousand years ago, and that they followed the expanding belt of lucidophyllous forest, eventually to settle in what is now Japan during the Jōmon Period, in accordance with the theory of regional pockets of “laurilignosa culture.” It is stressed that some of these people were probably speakers of Austronesian languages. Further, it is argued that the “Out of Taiwan” movement of Austronesian language speakers could have occurred later as a migratory counterflow accompanying the Holocene maximum, and that an “Out of Sunda” scenario of migration to Japan in the Jōmon period is not necessarily entirely incompatible with such an “Out of Taiwan” theory.

Introduction

In the past quarter century or so the question of the relationship between the prehistoric inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago and others beyond its shores has been the topic of much scholarly debate. This discourse encompasses a wide range of evidence from different disciplinary sources, including in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and historical linguistics. The various arguments

intersect at several points but conflict others. As yet there has emerged no clear-cut resolution to this debate. The present  essay will attempt to navigate the reader through analysis of the arguments in some of these diverse literatures, in order to advance the discussion and to suggest probabilities that take into account  both the overlaps and disjunctures in the evidence. The prevailing thinking has gone through several phases, which in some cases are tantamount to a volte-face. A brief overview is as follows.

First, a school of thought linked Jōmon 縄文 period (ca. 13,680–410 bce1) Japanese and indigenous Japanese Ainu with “Austronesians,” on the basis of cranial measurements

This view, led by Brace et al 99..(199 0), was partly corroborated by Benedict’s historical reconstruction of the Japanese language as having some Austronesian roots.3 This line of research ultimately speculated that Jōmon Japanese were the ancestors of modern Micronesians and Polynesians.4 Then Hanihara (199 1) and Turner (199 2) took the lead with their findings based mainly on dentition, to the effect that while Jōmon Japanese appeared to be most clearly related to Ainu and modern Southeast Asians, the population of the succeeding Yayoi 弥生 period (ca. 500 bce–300 ce)5 predominantly comprised Northeast Asians who had migrated to Japan mainly through the Korean Peninsula. At the same time it was recognized that this was a great oversimplification of the situation and that things were actually much more complex.6 There seems to have been little exploration of the issue of how or why such Southeast Asian peoples went to Japan in the Jōmon period. 7

Among views opposing the Jōmon/south–Yayoi/north taxonomy, it has also been proposed that it was later Yayoi people who accounted for Southeast Asian aspects of Japanese culture rather than the Jōmon.8 While the situation in Jōmon Japan is by no means clear, that in Holocene Southeast Asia is no more so.

This question obviously interrelates with what was happening in Southeast Asia at that time. In 99� the writing about that region,�,,,,,,,,,,,,the preeminent view, championed by Bellwood (199 7), argues for an “Out of Taiwan” scenario of Austronesian dispersal, originating in Taiwan and moving southward through Southeast Asia—more or less when the Hanihara-Turner scenario would have people moving in completely the opposite direction.9 The “Out of Taiwan” school of thought is based on a combination of evidence from archaeology (particularly the appearance of pottery and agriculture), biological anthropology ,,,,,,and historical linguistics. It places aboriginal Taiwanese as the ancestors of modern Polynesians.10

The “Out of Taiwan” scenario is now in turn facing criticism. The reliance on the appearance of pottery has been challenged,11 and it does not seem to explore adequately the links between Taiwan and Japan, where pottery is dated even earlier than in Taiwan.12 The question of the dispersal of agriculture, let alone that it was by “Austronesians,” remains largely hypothetical.13 The chief critic is Oppenheimer, on the grounds that it does not fit the genetic picture sufficiently well, either.14 The theories cannot both be right, since the “Taiwan” theory has Austronesian speakers originating in the north and moving south, while the “Sunda” theory has Austronesian-speaking people originating in the south (currently thought to be around Wallacea)15 and moving north, within approximately the same timeframe. In short, as research in this field has progressed, it has tended to demonstrate increasingly that the whole picture is exceptionally complex.16 As an outsider, so to speak—a geographer originally—my view is that the theories outlined above are not necessarily “all or nothing” matters of proof or disproof; they may well all be both right and wrong in parts, and are not necessarily entirely mutually exclusive. A common-sense approach—that humans were never traveling in only one direction at any time—may accommodate many aspects of the various theories proposed.

The Approach of this Study

The aim of this essay, then, is not to refute outright any of the above lines of reasoning, since they all contain much that is instructive. The aim is to explore the latest scenario pro­posed, which I call “Out of Sunda ..up to now those who have explored this have said little about JAPAN………

The focus here�is entirely on Jōmon Japan its relationship to Southeast Asia��. How plausible is Oppen heimer’s scenario in respect of Japan?17

Thiel (1987) postulated that reduction of land area in Southeast Asia during the periods of rising sea level after the Ice Ages caused increased population density that led people to seek new lands.18 Oppenheimer elaborated on this point and challenged several prevailing scholarly views—including the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis—in his book, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia (Oppenheimer �99� 199 8)�.19 His main argument was that rising sea levels caused such pressure on the diminishing land that it forced some of the inhabitants of Southeast Asia to depart in many directions in search of new lands. However, his interest lies in a putative thrust across the Indian Ocean, and he says little about whether or not some might have gone to Japan. Does Oppenheimer’s theory have relevance for the situation in Jōmon Japan?

The present essay will suggest that some of the migrants out of Southeast Asia who were fleeing from postglacial flooding ended up in the Japanese islands, eventually to settle and account for many or most of the Southeast Asian aspects of the Japanese population and culture that are recognized today.

If migrations took place, then the people of the time must have been equipped with the technology to travel safely and with purpose. It is now largely accepted that the prehistoric inhabitants of Southeast Asia were sufficiently advanced to be able to voyage intentionally eastward as far as the Solomon Islands as long as thirty thousand years ago. The period under scrutiny here is much later: it can be safely assumed that Southeast Asians during the Holocene were already sufficiently skilled seafarers.

The hypothesis proposed here, then, rests on several explicit assumptions. First, that some Jōmon Japanese originated in Southeast Asia. Strong evidence from biological anthropology, especially with the advent of DNA testing, has established that some portion of the population of Japan in the Jōmon period was overwhelmingly more closely related to present-day Ainu and Southeast Asians than to any others.20 But where, more precisely, did they come from? When? After all, the Jōmon period lasted some thirteen thousand years. Can we deduce whether they arrived in a steady flow, or in waves, and if so, when, exactly? And why did they go to Japan? Whatever could have prompted them to leave their homeland and perhaps make a long and perilous voyage to Japan? These are questions that have so far not been adequately addressed or satisfactorily answered.

Second, I assume that the population of Jōmon Japan was by no means homogeneous. On the basis largely of cranial measurements, Howells (1986) concluded “that Jōmon peoples were varied locally or tribally, and . . . were entirely unlike modern Japanese.”21 Pearson likewise states that “recent discoveries in Aomori and southern Hokkaido, the Japan Sea coast region, and Kagoshima have challenged the notion that there was a single heartland of Jomon Culture in the Chubu and Tohoku regions.”22 Clearly, in discussing Jōmon Japanese, we are referring to the composition of the population spanning at least thirteen millennia across the whole of the present Japanese archipelago: Jōmon peoples, plural, is the operative phrase in the quotation above. I also believe that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that some spoke an Austronesian language or languages.

Third, I assume that Southeast Asians had the skill and competence to reach Japan by sea routes. I attempt to address the questions of when and why Neolithic humans risked such

a long voyage northward across the Pacific Ocean. Following Oppenheimer, I hypothesize here that the well-attested arrival of immigrants from Southeast Asia to Japan during the Jōmon period was largely, or at least in part, as a result of the flooding of the former Southeast Asian continent of Sundaland, Wallacea, and perhaps northern Sahulland at the end of the Ice Ages.

Fourth, I assume that whatever the predominant migration flows were at any one time, once destinations were explored or settled it is likely that there were counterflows, an important but plausible point that seems to be all but ignored in the literature. I should like to stress at the outset that I do not contend that at any given point in time, migrations to Japan were necessarily unidirectional. On the contrary, to judge by the diversity in the composition of the population and the conflicting evidence emerging from research, it seems that migrations have taken place both into and out of Japan to a greater or lesser degree, and probably both to and from virtually all directions that the existing population source(s), climate, ocean currents, and transport technology of the time allowed, ever since humans first arrived there.23 This would account for the variability (peoples) noted above. My examination here of putative Southeast Asian migration to Japan in Jōmon times assumes that humans were traveling both to and from Japan to interact with other places at the same time. In other words, the theory that some Jōmon Japanese originated in Southeast Asia is not exclusive and in no way precludes the possibility that other sectors of the Jōmon population originated elsewhere. Nor does it exclude the likelihood that some prehistoric Southeast Asian influence on Japan dated from a different period.

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