(1) The Japanese archipelago today is one of old, entrenced cultures, political unity & relative ethnic uniformity. Yet the Yamato - the proper name of those often called simply the "Japanese ppl" - are not the only, nor the first on the islands
(2) Crucial to understanding any further discussion of Japan's past is the fact that the Yamato, much like the Celts and Teutons of the British isles, arrived in Japan as migrants & invaders - roughly at the same time the first Celts crossed into Britain, in fact.
(3) To begin our exploration of Japan's creation, we have to go back - far, far back, to the cold and desolate world of the Pleistocene, perhaps 40,000 years ago, when the Japanese archipelago was still connected to the mainland, and the first humans reached the area.
(4) Even while land still bridged the archipelago to the mainland, the Japanese region was an isolated place. The genetic split between the first Japanese and the mainland predates that between the East Asians and the folk who first crossed into the Americas.
(5) The word means Jōmon means "cord-marked", and was in fact first coined by American orientalist Edward S. Morse, before being adapted into Japanese. The word refers to their particular style of pottery, the practice of which began in the isles as early as 15kya.
(6) Of the culture of the ancient Jōmon, little can be said with certainty. Quite probably shamanistic, a characteristic of their culture was the production of "dogū"-figurines, typically animalic or, if humanoid, Venus-like.
They lived in pit-houses and limited, tribal units.
(7) With 40ky of history, the Jōmon would certainly have been not 1 but many cultures & languages. Nor were they utterly insulated, despite their isolation. In their ancestry are traces from maritime East-Asia, including, fascinatingly, Austronesian-related peoples.
(8) The end of the Jōmon period, and, ultimately, their culture and people began not in Japan, but in neighboring Korea. There, 1500 BC saw the dawning of the Mumun period, and with it, the advent of complex agriculture and social hierarchy.
(9) A megalithic culture, the Mumun produced large dolmens like those in Neolithic Europe. They were also the first to import tools and weapons of bronze, though it was not produced locally until 8th century BC. Though not predominating, rice-farming first reached Korea here.
(10) Crucially, the late Mumun period also sees the first appearance of Mumun-like settlements in Japan, on the southerly island of Kyushu. Here, for the first time, is evidence of substantial movement of foreigners into Japan, and with them, settled life and agriculture.
(11) Though linguistic evidence is necessarily scarce here, everything points towards at least the southern parts of the Korean peninsula being the Urheimat of the Japonic languages. Like the insular Celtic languages, Proto-Japonic as we know it likely split post-migration.
(12) The reasons for this migration of early agriculturalist Japonic-speakers across the sea and into Japan are likely diverse and multifaceted, but a very likely factor was the ongoing invasion of Korea by the iron-wielding Kanjin, eventual ancestors of today's Koreans.
(13) This transition is confused by the separate periodisations used by Korean & Japanese, but in Japan, this appearance of identifiably Mumun practices circa 300 BC marks the beginning of the Yayoi period, and with it, the end of the Japanese Paleolithic and the Jōmon period.
(14) I do not have time here to discuss the ultimate ending of the Jōmon people, of their development into the Emishi-tribes and, through admixture with Siberians, the Ainu, nor of the long wars between the Emishi and the rising Yamato empire. This, in the end, was but a prelude.
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An extremely fascinating bit of obscure history is that of the Kongsi republics in Western Borneo - Chinese 'company-states' predicated on gold and tin mining that existed on the island between the 1700s-1800s
The term 'kongsi' (公司) is not a Mandarin Chinese word, but instead from Hokkien, a Chinese language spoken primarily in southeastern Fujian, while the related form 'Kung-sze' exists in Hakka, another regional Sinitic language spoken in the south.
This etymology is significant because it belies the origin of the Southeast Asian kongsis. Both the Hakka and Hokkien peoples originated from the north of China, arriving in a south already populated by other Chinese groups. Pushed to the margins, they formed a mercantile culture
THREAD - The Origins of Kiswahili & the Swahili Coast
(1) In recent decades, Swahili has emerged as the African language par excellence, from culture & education to geopolitics. A bridge across the East African community, Swahili has deep roots - but where do they begin?
(2) With 200+ million speakers, the Swahili language is spread today across a vast swathe of eastern Africa, serving as the main national language in Tanzania and (alongside English) in Kenya, and with a growing presence in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Congo.
(3) It is the most widely spoken language entirely native to Africa by a sizeable margin. Despite this, Swahili is not exactly an ordinary member of the Bantu language family - emerging as a trading lingua franca across the eastern seaboard, it carries great foreign influence.
So many people discussing Dune (take a shot) get the prophecy of the Lisan al-Gaib wrong. They point out, correctly, that it is a fake prophecy, planted by the Bene Gesserit, and then conclude from this that Paul's rise as the mahdi is just empty propaganda, but... no.
The prophecy is part of the Bene Gesserit's 'Missionaria Protectiva', a panoply of false superstitions planted across the galaxy to aid the Bene Gesserit sisters in their grand breeding project, should they need help on a given world, by providing them leverage to manipulate.
But that's just the point, they are fake prophecies for the Bene Gesserit to manipulate. The BG were not actually expecting the Kwisatz Haderach to arise among the Fremen, nor on any of those other planets. Not outside their supervision. They *weren't meant to come true*
Most reports from traditional agrarian societies are that people despised their subsistence farming life and would do anything to escape it. See for instance Blythe's Akenfield.
To be clear, I am also v wistful about the passing of the old countryside and rural traditions, and Akenfield is certainly full of old-timers mourning the passing of many venerable and beautiful things.
But it cannot be understated that the day-to-day for most was miserable.
Any serious grappling with the issue of farmland life and tradition - just like any serious engagement with the preservation of traditional culture among peoples like the African Bushmen or Maasai - must face up to the fact that most people did & do not want to live that way.
(1) Easter, like Christmas, Halloween and so many other Western festivals is field for a now-annual set of arguments over the holiday's "true" provenance - Christian or "really" pagan? Much of this roots in a murky and debatable figure - 'Ēostre'
(2) The common narrative for the "Easter is pagan" crowd is well-known at this point: Aside from the extreme cranks drawing references to Mesopotamian Ishtar, the story goes that Easter takes its name from a goddess known in Old English as 'Ēostre' and German as 'Ostara'
(3) With this is usually attached a host of extremely tenuous claims about the supposed connection of other Easter staples - Easter eggs, bunnies - with the cult of Ēostre. These have essentially nothing going for them, but debates about Easter often get bogged down here.
A fundamental tragedy of human society appears to be that certain core societal goods are almost invariably mutually exclusive.
For some reason, friendliness in a culture seems consistently opposed to politeness, joy and vitality rarely co-occurs with safety and contentment.
Anyone who has spent prolonged time in the less developed part of the world, f.ex. Africa, will know that people there are famously extremely friendly and hospitable. Total strangers with no wealth and little spare time will go out of their way to help you on a whim.
At the same time, as such a traveler would also know, this individual friendliness is mirrored by an equal impoliteness and chaos at the broader level. Drivers drive like madmen, govt officials are corrupt, restaurant waiters are cold, etc.