Unlike in China, where hunting and gathering was often combined with farming, in Korea and Japan specialist foraging societies with only small-scale cultivation or management of wild plants developed in the Early Holocene. These societies are usually called ‘Chulmun’ in Korea and ‘Jomon’ in Japan. Both terms mean ‘cord-marked’, referring to a widespread type of pottery decoration. Chulmun (c. 6000-1500 BC) and Jomon (c. 14 500-400 BC) cultures share many features, such as villages with semi-subterranean pit houses, maritime adaptations evidenced by numerous shell midden sites, and sophisticated ceramic traditions. The long duration and broad geographical distribution of these cultures, however, also means that they were characterized by considerable internal diversity.
On the Korean Peninsula, sites from the Pleisto-cene-Holocene transition are relatively scarce. This has been interpreted as evidence that hunters followed game north with the climatic warming, the peninsula then being resettled by new Neolithic migrants. While some such population movements may have occurred, many earlier coastal sites were probably inundated by rising sea levels. Neolithic sites become much more common on the peninsula after about 8000 years ago. In Japan, sites of the Incipient Jomon phase (c. 14 500-8000 BC) are sometimes seen as representing an intermediate stage before the establishment of ‘typical’ Jomon culture in the Initial phase (c. 8000-5000BC). The Odai Yamamoto I site in Aomori has produced the earliest pottery from Japan with dates of around 14 500 cal BC. However, pottery is relatively rare in Jomon sites until the Initial phase. Shell middens only become common in the Initial phase, but evidence of salmon fishing is known from the Incipient phase Maedako-chi site in Tokyo.
The Jomon tradition tends to be marked by much more elaborate artifacts and sites than those found in the Chulmun cultures. This may reflect greater social complexity in Jomon Japan, though further work on this question is needed. Large Initial Jomon sites are known at Uenohara in Kagoshima and Nakano B in Hokkaido, but most of the evidence for Jomon complexity comes from the Late Holocene (i. e., after 5000 BC).
In Korea, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced by farming in the Bronze Age that began on the Peninsula around 1500 BC. In Japan, this transition occurred after about 500 BC in the Metal Age Yayoi period. In the northern island of Hokkaido, however, foraging by the Ainu people continued until Japanese colonization in the late nineteenth century, although from medieval times the Ainu had also been heavily involved in trade and other economic contacts with Japan and China.
See also: Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers.
World History
