Jomon Culture, Prehistoric Japan (Blog #1)

If there is any part of Asia that I would love to explore, it would be Japan. Upon reading the introduction and chapter 1 of our textbook, I found myself more interested about Japan than the other countries mentioned. So I did a little bit of web surfing and I found more about Neolithic Japan and a culture named Jomon (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jomon-culture). Like many of the countries mentioned in our reading, there are not exact dates as to when this culture came about but, some scholars would estimate around 10,500 BCE and lasting until approximately 300 BCE. The name Jomon refers to the type of pottery style found in Japan which had cordlike designs. The clay pottery is sophisticated despite not having any innovations such as the pottery wheel. The peoples here were much like those of Southeast Asia and even northern China.They mainly relied on hunting and gathering along with supplementing their diet with fish. Over the long period of time that this culture lasted, the pottery began to change and became more sophisticated. The pottery went from simple bowls to large vases, to figurines of fertility. I would love to see recreated sites and some of the pottery up close and personal. I feel that this is important when studying Asia because it shows which stages different countries were in around the same time and where people have migrated to and from. Here is another great site that has a sort of time line of the Jomon culture, http://jomon-japan.jp/en/jomon-cultur/ .