First of all, how much do you know about the Jomon period itself?
The Jomon period is the time between 13,000 and 300 BCE, a period that started with Jomon pottery and ended with the arrival of rice cultivation. Which brings us to our next question: What made this pottery style so significant to make it the name of the entire 13,000 year period? Can you imagine what kinds of tools were made with Jomon pottery and what they were used for?
Jomon pottery included tools such as boiling pots, which revolutionized the way people lived back then. By boiling water, people could eat food that was previously inedible because it was too hard or contained harmful substances such as lye. By boiling, hard materials could be softened, harmful materials could be removed, and the Jomon people could efficiently take in important nutrients for survival.
Before Jomon pottery and the idea of boiling, humans survived the same way animals do-- by spending all their time and energy searching for food, eating it, and digesting it. With the invention of Jomon pottery, suddenly people required less time to maintain survival essentials, and they were able to find other ways to spend their time, including rituals and stone circles.
Interesting Facts About the Jomon Period:
・They built pit dwellings, which means they progressed from nomads to settlers and started to build villages.
・They traded with other settlements overseas. It’s said that marriages took place between villages to connect and promote trade.
・They ate fruits such as acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, and horse chestnuts, as well as meat and fish. It’s also believed that they made and drank fruit liquor.
・They started to cultivate chestnut trees to use for building wood and also started making lacquer crafts by boiling lacquer.
・They developed a culture of spirituality with the use of artistic Jomon pottery, clay figurines, and stone circles.
The “Isedōtai” and “Ōyu Stone Circles” were created in the late Jomon period, around 2000 BCE. How did people live back then, and what did stone circles have to do with it? As we stand on the same ground the Jomon people did back then and learn more about them, let’s try to imagine these things.