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MIGRATION FROM JAPAN TO  ECUADOR:

 

THE JAPANESE EVIDENCE

 

Richard Pearson University of Hawaii

 

     The provocative theory of Meggers, Evans, and Estrada that the Valdivia pottery of Ecuador owes its inception to lost Middle Jomon fishermen from Kyushu, Japan (Meggers, Evans, and Estrada 1965; Meggers 1966; Meggers and Evans 1966) has been reviewed by a number of Americanists (Coe 1967; Ferdon 1966; Lathrap 1967). Dr. Lathrap pointed out several aspects of the authors’ interpretive sections that seemed questionable to him. My point in this brief communication is to evaluate the authors’ use of Japanese archeological materials, which has been largely neglected by previous reviewers, and to point out that the Jomon traits they have selected in no way demonstrate the existence of a prehistoric community from which migrants could have drifted to the New World.

 

     Meggers, Evans, and Estrada’s attempt to equate certain elements of Jomon culture in Honshu and Kyushu is premature.  At present, many Kyushu archeologists are using three or four periods, instead of the five established for Honshu (Kagawa 1965), so that even the broad categories of Early, Middle, and Late may be far from chronologically equivalent.  No radiocarbon dates exist for southern Kyushu, and many of the pottery types that have been dated in Honshu sites, especially those with cord marking, are very rare or absent in Kyushu. Imprecise time control has resulted from the Japanese selection of design techniques, such as incision or finger-nail impression, as temporal indicators; these techniques recur and recombine over long periods of time, whereas particular motifs appear to have existed for relatively short spans. Meggers, Evans, and Estrada encountered this problem in their attempt to tie down the rocker-stamping technique in Kyushu and to explain how it could have been used earlier than the Middle Jomon pottery related to Valdivia A and B and yet be transmitted to Valdivia C, which is later than Valdivia A and B (1965: 170). Similar unacceptable juggling is proposed to account for the diffusion of stone figurines, including the exceptionally early ones from the Kamikuroiwa Site, Shikoku Island (hundreds of miles away from Kyushu), while Kyushu figurines are not mentioned.

 

       The documentation of Kyushu archeology does not convince one that the authors attempted to gain any comprehensive picture of the subject from the published sources. In defense of their scant documentation, they state that “the relatively small number and obscure nature of publications on Kyushu sites frustrated further bibliographic research” (1965: 158). Actually, Kyushu archeology occupies several pages of the annual review Nihon Kokogaku Nempo (Archaeologia Nipponica), which is about as obscure as American Antiquity; and coverage in general books, such as Nihon no Kokogaku (The Archaeology of Japan) (Kagawa 1965) has been rather complete. Much of their reconstruction rests upon theIzumi site, yet theIzumi report, containing a lengthy English summary (Shimada and Hamada 1921), is not cited, nor is any other primary source covering Ataka or lesser sites. One of the features of Middle and Late Jomon pottery in Kyushu regarded as especially distinctive and significant by Japanese archeologists is the tapered rim, the diagnostic feature of the Ichiki series, common at the Immi site. The absence of this trait in Valdivia, mentioned in passing by Meggers, Evans, and Estrada (1965: 157), is probably more significant than the presence of other convergent motifs, yet the authors, without a thorough investigation of the Kyushu Jomon, were unable to do any weighting of the traits. The literature concerning the Todoroki site (Hamada, Sakakibara, and Shimada 1920; Kobayashi 1939; Matsumoto 1964), not cited by the authors, indicates that the Todoroki sherd illustrated (1965:fig. 101) is not from the Early Jomon components of the site, as they state, but from the Middle Jomon, since it is of the Ataka or Ichiki type. Since their control of Middle Jomon traits or a “Middle Jomon complex” (Meggers and Evans 1966:34-35) is so loose, this attribution does not affect their argument, but it does show a lack of familiarity with Kyushu Jomon pottery. 

 

       Despite the inclusion of several maps, the data concerning the Kuroshio, or Black Current, and their relevance to Jomon populations in Kyushu are somewhat misleading. All of the sites cited by the authors are on the west side of Kyushu, with the exception of the Honjo or Motojo site on Tanegashima Island. The Black Current, which they claim carried the Jomon fishermen on their way to America, divides into two streams south of Kyushu, and the westerly one proceeds past the Goto Islands toward the Korean peninsula (Niino 1964). This branch, indicated by two small arrows on the authors’ map (1965:fig. 103) is not elaborated upon in their presentation, but because of it, it is extremely unlikely that fishermen from Kagoshima Bay or the shallow waters near Kumamoto would be carried off to the southeast; they would first be carried off toward Korea. Why is there no mention of sites from Miyazaki or Oita Prefectures, on the east coast of Kyushu?

 

       In fact, the whole idea of deep-sea fishermen from the Jomon of South Kyushu is somewhat unsubstantiated.  Fishhooks are not uniformly present in Jomon; they are largely limited to sites in the Tokyo and Tohoku areas (Watanabe 1966)’ which are, interestingly enough, in the region of the Oyashio, or Cold Current. The statement that their food “included.. . deep water fish caught with hooks by fishermen in canoes offshore” (Meggers and Evans 1966:34) is still conjectural for South Kyushu.  Fishing gear is conspicuously scarce in Kyushu sites, and much of the seafood-collecting was probably done in sheltered bays and shallow areas.

 

       In the inference of migrations, one must be able to postulate a social group in the homeland from which the migrants were derived (Rouse 1958:65).  This cannot be done on the basis of scattered Jomon traits, much less without documentation of sites or settlements in the homeland area. Language barriers and an indigenous system of archeological classification do tend to make Japanese archeology somewhat inscrutable.  Nevertheless, the available evidence, the bulk of which was not considered by Meggers, Evans, and Estrada, would tend to make the derivation of Valdivia traits from Kyushu Middle Jomon communities extremely unlikely.

 

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