A Connection or Not:The Relationship between the Jomon and

Native Americans

By Ellie Gottschalk

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Introduction

One of the most interesting and controversial questions in Anthropology today is the

question of how Native American peoples came to the United States and who their ancestors

were. This subject however, is controversial to many Native American groups who retain their

own individual origin beliefs (Rubin, Paul 2004). By exploring this question scientists are

imposing their western scientific based opinions onto Native Americans, thus disrespecting and

disrupting various religious beliefs different indigenous groups have. Many in the scientific

community though, feel it is their duty as scientists to find factual evidence and indication of

how the earliest Americans first arrived in order to better understand human migration as a

whole.

In recent years anthropological evidence has pointed to Asia and Siberia as the homeland

for Native American groups, and particularly a group in Japan called the Jomon has been the

debated origin group. Today we shall explore more about the Jomon in order to examine their

potential link to Native Americans. First who the Jomon were and who their recognized

ancestors are shall be discussed, then relevant migration theories and models shall be presented

in order to ascertain when and how the first Americans might have arrived in the Americas. Next

archaeological and physical anthropological links shall be explored, followed by genetic

evidence that supports connections between the Jomon and certain Native American groups.

After presenting the various arguments a conclusion shall be made with respect to all the

proposed evidence supporting a link between the Jomon people and Native Americans.

Who Are the Jomon?

The Jomon are a very unique culture founded during the Holocene period, which is

known as a potential time when people started migrating to the Americas through Beringia

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(Jomon Culture ca. 10,500–ca. 300 B.C.2002). The name “Jomon” is derived from the Chinese

characters “Coil” and “Culture” that characterize the ceramics made during their time. Jomon

people were “semi-sedentary, living mostly in pit dwellings arranged around central open spaces,

and obtained their food by gathering, fishing, and hunting”.

During the last glacial period, evidence supports that Japan was connected to mainland

Asia by a land bridge linked through Hokkaido to the Sakhalin Islands (Adachi et al. 2009).

While some scientists maintain the Jomon entered Japan around 13,000 years ago others say as

recent as 8,000 years ago. The age of the Jomon continued until around 200-300 AD, and

because of this extensive timespan the Jomon culture is broken by four eras: the Initial Jomon

(8,000 to 5,000BC), the Early Jomon (5,000 to 2,500BC), the Middle Jomon (2,500 to 1,500BC),

and the Late Jomon (1,500BC to200AD) (“Jomon Culture ca. 10,500-ca 300 B.C”. 2002).

Today it is that the direct descendants of the Jomon are the Emishi and the Ainu. The

Emishi were a group of indigenous people who were eliminated by the Japanese during the 8th

century AD, because of their rebellion against the neighboring Japanese population. Related to

the Emishi, are the Ainu people, who still exist in Japan today and are recognized by the

Japanese government. Interestingly, there is no way to know the current population of the Ainu,

because they have mixed with the modern Japanese population so much which makes it difficult

to determine who is recognized as Ainu. This being stated, it is recognized that the primary

ancestors of the Japanese population are known as the Yayoi. The Yayoi are distinct from the

Jomon, and did not arrive to Japan until 200 AD, through the Tsugaru Strait and the Korea Strait

(Adachi et al. 2009).

Migration Theories and Models

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In order to understand how there could be a link between people in Asia and people in the

Americas it is important to understand various migration models and theories that have been

proposed to explain the peopling of the Americas.

Why would the Jomon leave is a question worth answering first in order to comprehend

the pressures that lead people to leave their homeland. The most important reason why the

Jomon would have left Japan is because of dramatic cooling changes to the Japanese

archipelago. Many scholars have found supporting evidence that the Middle Jomon Era is when

the Jomon culture began to collapse because of extreme environmental changes into cool

weather that occurred from 2,570 BC to 1,800 BC (Sakaguchi 2009). It has been estimated this

cooling trend is related to the cultural decline after the Middle Jomon period, because of the

decrease in aggregated villages in eastern and northern regions of Japan.

When exactly the first Americans came to the New World is still debatable by some, but

scientists are drawing more conclusions from genetic evidence that strongly supports Multiple

Migration theory. Multiple Migrations Theory specifics vary, but it is commonly believed by

scientists that the first settlers into the Americas would have entered from North east North

America from Asia (Monsalve 1998) with at least three separate migration waves.

The first wave would have occurred 30,000 to 15,000 years ago and their descendants are

the Amerindians that reside in South, Central, and some parts of North America. The second big

migration wave would have happened 15,000 to 10,000 years ago with the ancestors of the Na-

Dene. Finally the last migration wave is believed to have occurred 9,000 to 6,000 years ago by

the ancestors of the Aleut-Eskimos. It is thanks to molecular genetics studies on current

populations and ancient remains, and coalescent estimates based on variation in extant mtDNA

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lineages that scientists have been able to come to these results about multiple migrations and

when they happened (Goebel et al. 2008).

How they would have crossed from Asia to North America is the next question of interest

then. One migration model that has been accepted by many scientists in recent years is the

Pacific Coastal Rim Migration Model. The Pacific Coastal Rim Migration Model has been

proposed as the route by which some of the early Americans made their way into North America.

This migration model states Amerindians made their way from Asia through Beringia to the

Alaska coastline by following the pacific coastline by boats or by foot, or a combination of both.

There is evidence that indicates people in Japan have had access to boats since 25,000-

15,000 years ago (Erlandson, Brajeb 2011), and the Jomon were no exception to this. In fact their

culture has been characterized as having advanced Marine technology. In 1999 to 2000 a man

named Jon Turk attempted to travel the Pacific Coastal Rim Model from Hokkaido, Japan to

Nome Alaska by Kayak along with several other travel partners. Although he was successful in

completing this voyage several factors lead scientists to reject Turk’s journey as scientific proof

of early people being able to travel from Japan to Alaska by boat.

During Turk’s 3,000 mile voyage he used modern technology including a Geographic

Positioning System (GPS) to help guide him along the coastal lines, which does not aid scientists

in explaining how settlers who took the Pacific Coastal Rim route would have navigated to the

Americas (Hirst). Turk also took a two month break in the middle of his journey during the

winter seasons, and flew home to the United States until the weather become reasonable again.

Migrators to the Americas would not have had this luxury, thus Turk’s experimental voyage does

not explain or prove how early people would have survived the wintery tundra through Siberia,

Beringia, and Alaska. Lastly, Turk reportedly made contact and traded with local peoples on the

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various destinations he stopped and rested at. Travelers such as the Jomon would have had no

way to communicate with people from different regions. Do to all of these faults with Turk’s

experiment, his quest to prove that the Jomon of Hokkaido could sail from northern Japan to

Alaska has been deemed invalid by the scientific community.

Related to the Pacific Coastal Rim Model is the Kelp Highway Hypothesis, which

proposes kelp forests near the coasts along the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Baja, California,

acted as a route for early migrators (Erlandson, Brajeb 2011). The relatively similar ecology and

resources along the coast would have made it easy for migrating peoples to transition to new

locations, and travel along the coast.

Supporting Archaeological Evidence

Marine technology and archaeology theories seem to be interrelated to different

migration theories, which add to support that the Jomon possibly migrated into the Americas.

Although, in terms of archaeological evidence supporting a Jomon and Native American affinity

there is not much to be stated. Most archaeological sites relating to early migration through the

Bering Strait would be underwater by now, because of global climate and sea level changes

(Erlandson, Brajeb 2011). However, there are a few archaeological case studies in the Americas

that point towards a relationship to Jomon culture.

One of the first links to the Jomon people and early Americans came from a pottery study

on the Machalilla Culture of Valdivia, Ecuador in 1960 (Meggers et al. 1965). In Meggers et al.’s

article they suggested that Machalilla Culture Pottery came from outside Mesoamerica because

there was nothing like it during that time in the region or surrounding regions. They found

though, unique and striking similarities between Kyushu Jomon pottery and Machalilla pottery,

which they believed were related through the makers and creation style. To explain this

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phenomenon, Meggers et al. do not argued accidental drift of Jomon fishermen caused some

Jomon settlers to arrive in Ecuador. However, this hypothesis has been refuted due to lack of

evidence of how the Kyushu Jomon could have reached South America, and a lack of support

from archaeologists agreeing that the pottery is similar enough to make a connection.

Nonetheless, this case study is of interest to this topic.

Another archaeological case study links early migrators and harpoons. All across the

North Bering Sea harpoon technology, which was used to hunt for sea mammals and large fish,

have been found (Fitzhugh 2004). Particularly toggle harpoons have been found in these cold,

north regions. Some of the earliest toggle harpoons have been found in Old Whaling and

Wrangel Island Chertov Ovrag sites that date to around 1,500 B.C., yet it has been documented

that the Yupik Eskimos still use them to hunt. The origins of harpoon technology are ambiguous.

It has been hypothesized though; toggle harpoons might have come from the Jomon culture.

Evidence comes from toggle harpoons that have been found as early as 5,000 years ago.

This phenomenon also supports the Pacific Coastal Rim model, along with evidence from

shell middens. Shell middens have been discovered in abundance from Japan to Baja, California

which indicates people along the coast were gather similar food around the pacific coastal rim,

and traveling groups (Erlandson, Brajeb 2011). Further, Multiple Migration Theory, Pacific

Coastal Rim Model also and Jomon and Native American affinities are supported by physical

anthropological evidence as well.

Supporting Physical Anthropological Evidence

Physical Anthropological links are perhaps one of the most compelling forms of evidence

for Native American affinity to the Jomon. Of the various paleo-remains that have been

discovered on the North American continent there are two individuals that appear to be related to

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the Ainu, the descendants of the Jomon. The first paleo-American remains that were connected

to the Ainu were those of Spirit Cave Mummy’s (Morrell 1998). His remains were discovered in

Spirit Cave in Nevada and were carbon-dated to be around 9,000 years old, which makes these

skeletal remains one of the oldest remains found in North America. Examiners of Spirit Cave

Mummy came to the conclusion that he was not similar to Native Americans, because his cranial

vault is higher, his face is narrower, and his cheekbones are slimmer than Native Americans’ and

Northeast Asians’.

The second paleo-American skeleton that has been linked to the Ainu is Kennewick Man.

In 1996 two boy found skeletal remains in the Columbus River while attending a boat race.

James Chatters was the forensic anthropologist who collected the remains in situ, and then

realized the antiquity of the remains (Zimmerman, Clinton 1999). A radiocarbon date was done

on a finger bone, and it was discovered the skeleton was about 8410 +/- 60 years old, making

Kennewick Man another one of the oldest skeletons found in North America. According to one

of the examiners of Kennewick Man, Owlsey who also examined Spirit Cave Mummy (Morrell

1998), he does not believe Kennewick Man was a Native American, and that his facial

characteristics were most similar to the Ainu (Kennewick Man Skeletal Find May Revolutionize

Continent's History, 2006).

The similarities in age and the cranial region suggest to scientists that both Kennewick Man and

Spirit Cave Mummy are related to one of the groups that migrated to the New World and are

related to the Ainu. Unfortunately no genetic data has been recovered from either of these

individual. However, there is other genetic evidence from HLA studies on current populations

and Haplotype studies on Jomon remains that give evidence to support a genetic connection

between the Jomon and some Native American groups.

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Supporting Genetic Evidence

In a study conducted in 1998, led by Monsalve from the University of Alaska, she took a

large Alaskan Native American sample of DNA, looked at the HLAs, and compared it to HLAs

from Native American populations and HLAs from several Asian populations, including the

Ainu (Monsalve 1998). HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) is found on your 6th chromosome in

the HLA-D region. It plays an important role in regulating the immune system in your body, and

susceptibility to certain autoimmune diseases. This histocompatibility system is the most

polymorphic system in the human genome making it a great resource for population studies,

which why Monsalve chose to study the HLA class I and II.

In her research Monsalve found the most common alleles in Athabaskans were

DRB1∗1402, ∗1401, and ∗0901, which accumulated to 62.1% of their total allele frequency.

DRB1 1401 was found in Ainu groups at a frequency of 20%, which is the highest number

reported in Asia outside of Native American groups. This led Monsalve to conclude the high

haplotype DRB1*1401 in Athabaskans and the Ainu indicate a common origin.

In a more recent study, mtDNA Evidence from Jomon skeletons collected at the

Funadomari site in 1999 on Ruben Island located between Hokkaido and Sakhalin drew evidence

to a genetic link between these Funadomari Jomon and some Native American groups (Adachi et

al. 2008). MtDNA was extracted and examined from the teeth of thirteen different individual

remains, and found that four of the remains were identified as haplogroup D1, because of

similarities in their HVR I, HVR II, and coding regions.

Haplogroups come from identifying an individual’s haplotype. Haplotypes are assigned

to people by examining specific mutations observed in the HVR regions in an mtDNA sequence

and sequence analysis of the coding region. Of the various Native American groups in North,

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central, and South America only five haplotypes have been found, and assigned haplogroups,

which are Haplogroups A, B, C, D, and X (Long & Bortolini 2011). All of these mtDNA

lineages are currently spread throughout populations in Mongolia, Tibet, Siberia and other parts

of Northern Asia, which suggests that these populations are the closest genetic relatives to Native

Americans outside of the Americas.

The fact that some of the Funadomari Jomon remains were identified as Haplotype D1 is

significant, because the only other Haplogroup D1in Asia are an indigenous mongoloid group in

southern Siberia called, the Ulchi. In the Americas the D1 haplogroup is most commonly found

in Native American groups such as the Inuit, and the Chukchi. The researchers of this group

concluded that the Jomon of this region and the Inuit and Chukchi are related to each other

through the Ulchi as their common ancestor. This they say makes a direct connection between

the Jomon and some Native American groups. Albeit, the researchers also admit that differences

in haplogroups between Jomon populations of different regions, which means this study does not

conclude that all Jomon people have a genetic affinity to certain Native American groups.

Linguistic Evidence Supporting Genetic Evidence

Linguistic evidence also supports the genetic evidence that has been presented through

the Na-Dene and Yeniseic Connection Theory. The Na-Dene and Yeniseic Connection Theory

proposes Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages as belonging to the same linguistic family (Greenberg

1998). The linguistic evidence for this comes from similarities in abstract forms of lexical and

grammatical morphemes, route words, and rules about composition between Ket, which is

language spoken now by only 550 people along the Yenisei River in central Siberia, and the Na-

Dene protolanguage, which has been reconstructed to account for modern Athabaskan languages

(Vajda 2008)(Greenberg 1998). This proposed language family would entail the greatest distance

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overland covered by any other known language nomadically (Vajda 2008). Unfortunately, many

linguists are hesitant to use their data to reconstruct the history of populations beyond 8,000

years ago, which is why there is not a lot of evidence supporting a connection between the

Jomon and Native American groups (Goebel et al. 2008).This evidence that has been presented is

only relevant to studies between the Jomon and Native American groups if the genetic evidence

from HLA studies and mtDNA are truly correct.

Conclusions

The topic of whether there is a connection to the Jomon and Native American origins has

been presented through various fields of study and cases. First the migration theories currently

presented today through archaeological and scientific evidence supports a connection to Asia

through multiple migrations through the Pacific coastal rim. Next, archaeological links to the

Jomon through toggle harpoons and shell middens has been questioned by scientists and

presented in this research paper, along with physical anthropological evidence that supports two

paleo-American remains having a link to the Ainu who are the descendants of the Jomon. Then

genetic evidence in the HLA links the Ainu to Athabaskan groups because of the frequent

occurrence of unique alleles between the two groups. Meanwhile, mtDNA analysis links some

northern Jomon populations and the Ulchi to the Inuit and Chuckchi from haplotype grouping.

Finally if there is a connection between the Jomon, the Ulchi, and certain Alaskan Native

Americans then the Na-Dene and Yeniseic Connection Theory supports a connection from

Siberia and northern Asia to Athabaskan groups.

In conclusion with all of this supporting evidence for a connection, it seems the Jomon of

Japan are most likely not related to all Native American groups. Also given the period in which

the Jomon existed and when Jomon culture decreased, it is most likely that if they did come to

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the Americas through the Pacific Coastal Rim Migration Model, they were part of the end of the

second wave or last wave of migration to the Americas around 10,000-8,000 years ago. The

genetic evidence from the Funadomari Jomon mtDNA analysis suggests the Jomon are most

likely not directly linked to Native Americans, but are close relatives through connections to the

Ulchi. However it does seem likely that some Eskimo and Inuit groups do have a connection to

the Jomon, because of genetic, physical anthropological and archaeological evidence. These

conclusions though are only based on the various case studies and known facts about the Jomon

that have been found and presented in this paper.

By researching about specific past populations and migration it is possible to collect the

history of human migration by examining case by case studies in order to understand how human

populations from different regions are interconnected. This is critical if we hope to understand

human origins, genetics, and collect a holistic perspective of what it means to be human.

Of the various information that has been released about this topic it appears future studies

on the Jomon and Native American origins are most currently being conducted in Japan by

researchers with most of the archaeological research being conducted in the islands north of

Japan between Russia, Hokkaido, and northern Honshu.

There is not so much work being conducted in Western cultures about the Jomon, but

some studies about the origins of Native Americans and the various migration waves is still a

substantial research topic in Anthropology today. Although more and more it seems western

researchers are placing more emphasis on Native American origins coming from Siberia rather

than East Asia.

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