Rock artists in Sycachi-Alyan, 12 Millenniums ago (4)

 While those ancient Sicachi-Alyan artists had been carving their imaginary creation on the rocks along Amur between 12,000 B.C. and 500 B.C., the ancient inhabitants in Japan were making the so-called "cord-marked" potteries with the decoration of impressing cords into the surface of wet clay. This entire period is called as Jomon which literally means "cord-marked" in Japanese. Was there any intercourse between the two ancient neighboring people? And could we prove it in a scientific manner or by identifying some similarity in their cultural archaeological remains?      

Prehistoric culture in Japan
The Jomon culture in Japan is classified as Neolithic and divided into five phases. The earliest phase of this culture developed in Hokkaido and Tohoku, the northern parts of Japan, which is considered to have begun about 12,000 B.C. when Japan was linked to continental Asia as a narrow peninsula. Some scholars believe that the early Jomon culture was brought from Siberia via Sakhalin and the people of this culture were the ancestors of the present-day Ainu. If so, the ancient culture of Sycati-Alyan could have been carried in some extent to the Japanese Archipelago by them. Could we recognize any similarity between the various design patterns found on Sikachi-Alyan's rock carvings and those of Ainu or Jomon people in Japan? This is a mystery.  

 Jomon Pottery 
  Jomon pots are the oldest ones in the world. Pottery was first invented by hunter-gathers living in Japan, China and Korea during the last Ice Age about 14,000 years ago. Take a look at some photographs of Jomon potteries with seemingly snake or vortex designs, which I found on Internet although their exact creation dates were not specified. Is it possible to connect these design patterns with those found in Sycachi-Alyan petroglyphs from the artistic view?

      

The late Prof. Hourai of National Institute of Genetics, who happened to be my senior at the mountain trekking club in the university, had sought for the root of Japanese by analyzing mitochondrial DNA. He claimed that;
- the contemporary Japanese are of mixed Jomon and Yayoi parentage.
- the Yayoi people came from the mainland China through the Korean Peninsula during the periods from 300 BC to 300 AC.
- the Jomon people came from the north in the Jomon era, the time dated back to Prehistoric Japan from 14,500 BC to 300 BC, when the Japanese Archipelago was connected to the Eurasian continent. 

 I also find the interesting description on the web site by the NPO "Amur Region Historical Heritage Fund". It suggests that there existed some cultural contacts between the inhabitants of the lower Amur and Ains' ancestor in pre-historic era. Let me cite this below; 

"In ancient times there were contacts between the culture carriers of the Amur river, Ains' ancestors and tribes of Indonesia and Polynesia. A witness of such links is a wide spread of the vortex ornament, that has the Snake cult as a basis. Presumably, this was further spread out and in remote Australia and Vietnam. The culture of the Lower Amur neolithic tribes is strongly expressed in the Sycachi-Alyan rock drawings and, most likely, had the influence far bound the frontier of this region."

It's a nice experience for us to realize how we've come a long way.

References;
(1) The web site of "Amur Region Historical Heritage Fund" 
(2) "Down The Amur from Khabarovsk to Nikolaeusk-na-Amure"
(3) "Ancient Art of the Amur Region - Rock Drawings Sculpture Pottery" 
      by Alexei Okladnikov

(4) "Jomon period" from Wikipedia

(The End of this series "Rock artists in Sycachi-Alyan, 12 Millenniums ago ".)