Jōmon period

The Jōmon period (縄文時代 Jōmon jidai^?) is the time in Japanese prehistory from about 14,000 BC^[1][2] to 300 BC.

The term jōmon means "cord-patterned" in Japanese.
This refers to the pottery style characteristic of the Jōmon culture, and which has markings made using sticks with cords wrapped around them. This period was rich in tools, jewelry, figures and pottery.^[3]

The Japanese are considered today to be descended from a mixture of the ancient hunter-gatherer Jōmon culture and the later rice agriculture Yayoi culture. These two major ancestral groups came to Japan over different routes at different times.

According to archaeological evidence, the Jōmon people created some of the oldest known pottery vessels in the world, known as Jōmon Pottery, dated to the 14th Millenium BC.^[9]

The manufacturing of pottery typically implies some form of sedentary life due to the fact that pottery is highly breakable and thus generally useless to hunter-gatherers who are constantly on the move. The Jōmon people were therefore probably some of the earliest sedentary or at least semi-sedentary people in the world.