ABSTRACT
Over two thousand years ago, there occurred in Japan one of the most dramatic and thorough-going transformations in the history of human society: the massive discontinuity between the so-called Jōmon and Yayoi cultures in the second half of the first millennium BCE. Around this discontinuity, the hunter-gatherer way of life of Jōmon Japan was totally transformed by a whole range of radical innovations. These innovations were not just equal to but actually greater than those brought about by other great transformations in human history. Thus, they included the massive changes that occurred elsewhere in the world during the so-called Neolithic (‘new stone age’) Revolution, which saw the introduction of agriculture and a major socio-political and cultural transformation. These Neolithic changes included the production of better and more diverse tools, occupational specialization, accumulation of property, the development of larger social groups and status distinctions, and the development of the symbolic aspects of human culture such as the concept of another world that we now see reflected in grave goods.
