Violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan

Abstract

The origins and consequences of warfare or largescale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistor ic hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two different evolutionary models, i.e., parochial altruism model and subsistence model. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism and the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable.

A proposal of a new automated method for SfM/MVS 3D reconstruction through comparisons of 3D data by SfM/MVS and handheld laser scanners

“…Our dataset is composed of 19 jars, all of which are categorized as the Ongagawa-style pottery of the Early Yayoi period (800−300 cal BC, see [ 39 – 41 ]), when rice farming was introduced to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula [ 42 , 43 ]. The shapes and styles of this pottery are relatively simple and homogeneous.…”

Bronze Age Maritime and Warrior Dynamics in Island East Asia

“…Although levels of violence in the Neolithic Jōmon period continue to be debated (Nakao et al 2016;, by any criteria there is abundant evidence for warfare in the Yayoi. A recent compilation based on existing reports found that more than 3 per cent of skeletons from Yayoi Japan have evidence of skeletal violence (Nakagawa et al 2017). This is likely to be an underestimate since new bioarchaeological protocols for violent trauma have been developed in recent years (Schulting & Fibiger 2012).…”

Violence and climate change in the Jōmon period, Japan

“…As already mentioned, it has been commonly pointed out that warfare or inter-group violence began in the Yayoi period (e.g., Hashiguchi, 2007 ;Matsugi, 2007 ;Sahara, 1986 ). Nakagawa and colleagues ( 2017 ;2019 ) and Nakagawa ( 2020 ) used the same method as Nakao and colleagues ( 2016 ) to calculate the rate of injuries among the Yayoi period skeletal remains and statistically compared them (for details see Table 20.3 below, and the supplementary data in Nakagawa et al, 2017 ). The results show a statistically signifi cant increase in evidence for violent confl ict over time, supporting Nakao and colleagues' ( 2016 ) claim that violence was low for the hunting and gathering period in the Japanese archipelago.…”

“…Estimates of mortality attributable to violence over the Yayoi period (see alsoNakagawa et al, 2017 ) …”