Origins of Japan

The early history of Japan has long been an enigma, cloaked in the obscurity of millennia. But as with so many other places, the wonders of population genetics and advances in archaeology are finally answering many of the most central questions of Japanese identity. Who are the Japanese people? From where did their ancestors immigrate? Which of their oral traditions and myths have been supported by science, and which contradicted? A new research initiative in Japan, the JEWEL () study, has confirmed many elements of new theories that have begun to come into focus regarding the three major waves of migration into Japan over the last 40,000 years. The first, of the proto-Jōmon, has been known for quite some time. The Yayoi, who migrated from Central China through the Korean Peninsula ~2500 years ago, have begun to be well documented also. But a new migration, previously unknown in the historical and archaeological record, has revealed that during the