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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. |