2002 Takamiya 2002), and gave rise to the Jomon culture ≥12,000 years ago (Chard 1974). An early wave of migration brought people to Japan more than 30,000 years ago (Ono et al. Abundant archaeological evidence documents at least two major migration processes that brought people from the Asian continent to the Japanese archipelago. A number of contrasting models attempt to explain the fairly large range of morphological, cultural, and genetic variation represented in modern Japanese populations and recognized in the archaeological and fossil records. The results also support the hypothesis of a Central Asian origin of Jomonese ancestors, and a Southeast Asian origin of the ancestors of the Yayoi, contra previous models based on morphological and genetic evidence.Īfter more than 100 years of intense investigation (Mizoguchi 1986), the origin of the Japanese population still remains controversial. We infer that these patterns result from separate and distinct genetic contributions from both the Jomon and the Yayoi cultures to modern Japanese, with varying levels of admixture between these two populations across the archipelago. Coalescent analyses of Y chromosome short tandem repeat diversity indicated that haplogroups D and C began their expansions in Japan ~20,000 and ~12,000 years ago, respectively, while haplogroup O-47z began its expansion only ~4,000 years ago. In contrast, haplogroup O lineages (51.8%) were distributed in an inverted U-shaped pattern with a maximum frequency on Kyushu. Haplogroup D chromosomes were present at 34.7% and were distributed in a U-shaped pattern with the highest frequency in the northern Ainu and southern Ryukyuans. Japanese populations were characterized by the presence of two major (D and O) and two minor (C and N) clades of Y chromosomes, each with several sub-lineages. Our global sample consisted of >2,500 males from 39 Asian populations, including six populations sampled from across the Japanese archipelago. A set of 81 Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was used to trace the origins of Paleolithic and Neolithic components of the Japanese paternal gene pool, and to determine the relative contribution of Jomon and Yayoi Y chromosome lineages to modern Japanese. Hunter-gatherers arrived before land bridges were submerged after the last glacial maximum (>12,000 years ago) and gave rise to the Jomon culture, and the Yayoi migration brought wet rice agriculture from Korea beginning ~2,300 years ago.

Historic Japanese culture evolved from at least two distinct migrations that originated on the Asian continent.

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