Jōmon Period (10,000 BCE – 300 BCE)
During the Jōmon Period, Neolithic culture arrived in Japan (spreading from the Sea of Japan inward) from, it is believed, East and Southeast Asia. This period was marked by the presence of hunting and gathering communities, and the production of earthenware known as jōmon (“cord-marked”), from which the era derives its name. The scattered settlements did not yet constitute a cohesive or ethnically homogeneous polity.
