The World’s First Pottery Created in Jomon, Japan

Upper Paleolithic Czechoslovakia / Venus Dolni Vestonice / earliest ceramic

Before pottery the ever active, human ‘big brain’ invented ceramics. Archeologists have a good candidate for that ‘First’ in history. The oldest known ceramic object is the Venus of Dolní Vestonice, a small female figurine found in 1925 in the excavation of a Gravettian Paleolithic settlement of the same name in the Moravian basin south of Brno, Czechoslovakia. It is dated 23-27,000 B.C and is a small figurine at 4.4” tall (a personal amulet?) that depicts an abstraction of the female figure that emphasizes fertility.

There are other figurines at Dolní Vestonice that are much more common: bears, lions, mammoths, horses, foxes, rhino and owls, and also more than 2,000 balls of burnt clay. The making of small figurines was important to this culture, but depicting the human form was almost never done. The clay was fired at low temperature and there is no evidence that this Gravettian culture made pottery.

Incipient Jomon / Pottery from Niigata Prefecture

Jomon Culture – Earliest Culture and Lifestyles

The invention of pottery occurred on the other side of the world in Japan, in an ancient culture known as the Jomon. The Jomon Period occupied a long span of Japanese history from 14,000 B.C. to 400 B.C. Land bridges persisted with the Asian mainland until c.12,.000 B.C. Jomon ancestors walked slowly to Japan from East Asia, hunting and fishing every day as their nomadic culture had done for thousands of years.

‘Jomon’ means ‘cord patterned’, or ‘cord impressed’. Jomon potters decorated their clay vessels by marking/pressing into clay with sticks wrapped with cords. The Jomon were hunter gatherers but semi-sedentary. Their tribal/clan culture is as expected for their location and time in Japan. However, look under the hood and we find extraordinary inventiveness. Jomon artistic talent was also exceptional and later Jomon potters produced magnificent vessels with a sophisticated refined design such as the beautiful vase that is the lead image for this post.

Jomon / Stone Axes – Niigata Prefecture

The Jomon made chipped and ground stone tools, traps, bows and arrows, and were skilled coastal and offshore fishermen. Lithic technology and micro-blade technology closely resembles that from the Late Upper Paleolithic of Japan and Siberia. Axes with polished stone edges, stone drills, arrow heads and arrow shaft smoothers can be identified. The axes were not weapons; they were used to dig up edible tubers and roots from the forest floor.

Incipient Jomon, Pottery Vessel/Niigata Prefectural Museum of History

Hunting was a primary activity, with Shika deer taken in winter and wild boar hunted throughout the year. Widely deployed pit traps and, later, hunting dogs were used to hunt a great diversity of animals. Earliest Jomon often lived in caves and were semi-nomadic. The earliest shelters that the Jomon constructed were small pit houses which appear in their second period – Early Jomon, 8000- 5,000 B.C. They are no more than 5’ in diameter with a thatched roof supported by wooden posts. Recognizable villages and shell middens, refuse for future archeologists to dig into and ponder, also appear in the Early Jomon. The shell middens tell us that shellfish were collected everywhere: cockles, limpets, clams and oysters were among the more than 350 species eaten, most often in the spring.

In later Jomon cultural phases, dogs were domesticated and used for hunting. They were not food animals, but were highly valued, and dog burials have been found. There is a possibility that boars were partially domesticated after 7,000 B.C. Before that date there are no boars on the Izu Islands or Sado Island. Afterwards, boar remains were found on both Island localities. Boars are poor swimmers, and speculation suggests they were deliberately brought to the island, if only for release to establish local wild populations that the Jomon could hunt.

Slide Show Tour of Replica Village, Final Jomon Period - in Japanese

Pottery Invented in the Incipient Jomon Period, Ancient Japan

Why pottery making was invented in this place and time may never be understood. Pottery with ‘cord impression’ decoration was made by the first Jomon culture, an archeological period known as Incipient Jomon, 14,000 to 7500 B.C. The oldest, securely dated Jomon pottery is 46 pottery shards from a single vessel that were found at the Odai-Yamamoto site. They are dated to 16,500 B.C and have only a few incised lines for decoration.

The Jomon Culture, and we presume a distinctive Jomon people as well, persisted for a very long time because the Final Jomon Period does not end until 300 B.C. Pottery is not common in Incipient Jomon sites; it was made infrequently. Later Jomon cultures produced exquisite pottery with sophisticated decoration patterns and images, art objects that rank with the finest produced anywhere and some of which have been designated National Treasures by the Japanese government.

Incipient Jomon / Pottery Vessel – Niigata Prefectural Museum of History

Most early Jomon pots are small vessels with round bases which we can easily imagine were placed into a fire to cook and boil food. The starchy, fibrous tubers dug up in the forest could now be made edible by boiling, as they are too tough to eat raw.

Jomon clay vessels were fired at low temperature. Some pottery of the Incipient Jomon Period was not decorated. A sequence of pottery decorative techniques unfolds through these earliest Jomon centuries: bean appliqué was followed by a linear appliqué decorative pattern and then a decorative design that could only have been made by pressing into the clay with fingernails. At the end of the Incipient Jomon Period, the first flat base vessels with thick rims appear and they have cord markings all over their surface. Clay earrings were also made.

Incipient Jomon / Oatsu Pottery Vessel – Niigata Prefectural Museum of History

There are over 80 Jomon archeological sites in Japan and most of the pottery comes from later Jomon periods. Earliest Jomon cultural phases are unremarkable except for this one extraordinary development. The first Jomon were typical early Mesolithic hunter gatherers, efficiently exploiting the many resources in their local environment – a fine illustration of sustainability. Early in their history, they invented fire hardened pottery and the world would never be the same afterward as the technology spread across the planet. When the Jomon archeological record finally disappears, a new culture has arrived from East Asia, bringing with it a new agriculture and innovative technologies. The Jomon people, of course remained.

Museum Gallery tour with Jomon pottery from all periods. Fine examples of dogu, small human and animal figurines

The Ainu of Hokkaido

On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, there still lives an indigenous people who were known as Ainu to feudal Japan. Lighter of skin, with different physical features than the Japanese, and possessing a distinctive language and mythopoetics, Ainu origins have been difficult to uncover. Modern anthropological genetics has confirmed they are not a surviving remnant of an early Japanese people.

Jomon - Koro Incense Burner / human face - Nagano Prefecture

In the 8th century A.D., migration to the main Japanese islands from China and the Korean peninsula introduced new pottery styles and intensive rice agriculture. Jomon descendants and others emigrated to Hokkaido and northern islands. This situation produced the Satsumon Culture that over the next few centuries absorbed the Okhotsk Culture, a maritime people that had come into the region from southern Sakhalin in the 5th century. The Satsumon Culture loses it identity in the 11h century, and the Okhotsk cannot be identified after the 13th century. The Ainu are recorded in the Japanese historical record from the 13th century A.D. onward, which implies their origin. Mitochondrial DNA from Okhotsk human bone material shows close affinity with Ainu mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA studies of Ainu bone remains suggest Ainu origins might lie with a merger of Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures. From diverse inputs, one of which is the Jomon descendant Satsumon, arose the Ainu people. There is also following input from the Japanese gene pool that begins when they first contact the Ainu.

Iomante – Dreaming the Ainu Bear Ceremony

It is significant that a link to the ancient Jomon people is preserved. It is also fascinating that the Ainu practiced a Paleolithic bear ritual known as Iomante into the 1920s, a ceremony that could reflect their Jomon ancestor origins in late Paleolithic East Asia. A bear cub was raised, fattened and then sacrificed to their mountain gods.

Iomante is gone, and today the Ainu struggle to maintain their identity and honor their Jomon ancestors in modern, technological Japan. Thanks to the earliest Jomon clans, humankind can cook, bake, barbecue, boil and brew in ways never before possible. At the far end of this trail that began as the last ice age was ending in Japan, we have Friday night barbecue with family and friends, and fillet mignon in the finest restaurants.

Sources -
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