The mystery of Japanese ancestry solved
When it comes to the origins of the Japanese, most people immediately think of the legend of Xu Fu's eastward crossing. It is said that during the Qin Dynasty, Xu Fu led 3,000 children on a ship that crossed Penglai Island to the east to find the elixir of immortality for Qin Shi Huang.
However, due to various reasons, Xu Fu was unable to return, but instead led the fleet all the way east, eventually reaching Japan, thus forming the earliest Japanese nation. So, are the ancestors of the Japanese Chinese?
In this question, we have to be grateful to the discipline of molecular genetics. In the past, when we judged the origin of species, we usually looked for other species elsewhere in the globe and compared their similarities to determine their relevance.
However, there is a concept in the field of biology called convergent evolution, where two different species living in the same environment may evolve very similarly, which leads to a lot of errors in previous methods.
Thus, through molecular genetics, we can study the origin of a species directly at the genetic level. Moreover, modern people have used molecular genetics to list a fairly clear picture of the development of the Japanese people.
30,000 years ago, early humans in northern Asia began to settle on the four islands of Japan and gradually evolved into the Jomon people. Evidence for this theory comes from a woman who lived in Hokkaido between 3,960 and 3,550 years ago, and scientists found that she had a special gene that helped her quickly digest fatty foods, which made up to 70 percent of Inuit people.
Thus, it is possible that the Jomon people share the same ancestors as the Inuit people who lived in the Arctic, and these Inuit belong to the typical race. Through extensive genetic sequencing, we speculate that they may have come from northern Asia, most likely from what is now Mongolia.
Thus, the earliest ancestors of Japan may have been a group of "rampagers" who crossed eastward from northern Asia to Japan, a period around 180,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Data from geography also supports this view. During this period, many parts of the planet are in a cold freezing period, with large amounts of water condensing into ice, causing sea levels to drop.
As a result, the Bohai, Yellow and East China Seas became vast plains at that time, Hainan Province was part of the mainland, and Japan and the Asian continent were connected. At that time, the Bering Strait was a land bridge, and many yellow people came to the Americas through the Bering Strait and became the current Native Americans.
After the end of the Great Ice Age, global sea levels rose, and the Jomon people became isolated island dwellers. However, the modern Japanese are not entirely derived from the Jomon people, but mainly from the Watarai Yayoi people.
Scientists have found that only 12% of the genes of modern Japanese people are derived from the Jomon people, while most of the genes come from the Watarai Yayoi people, who are very similar to the Chinese.
Through comparative research on the genes of the Watarai Yayoi and the inhabitants of the Asian continent, scientists have found that the genes of the Watarai Yayoi people are highly overlapping with the northern residents of China and some other ethnic minorities, which indicates that the ancestors of the Watarai Yayoi people are closely related to the current northern Chinese.
Scientists speculate that the Yayoi people of the Watarai line may have originated in the Jiaodong and Liaodong regions.
Chinese historical records show that after Chen Sheng and others revolted to overthrow the rule of the Qin Dynasty, tens of thousands of people in Yan, Qi, Zhao and other regions fled to the Korean Peninsula to escape the war.
Many scientists believe that from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, a large number of residents of Liaodong and Jiaodong fled to the Korean Peninsula and then sailed to Japan. With more advanced **, they competed with the local aboriginal Jomon people, and gradually squeezed out the living space of the Jomon people.
According to archaeological findings, from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the Qin and Han dynasties, the number of Jomon people in Japan was significantly reduced. Between 3,200 and 2,000 years ago, the number of Jomon people in the area dropped sharply from 260,000 to 80,000.
This suggests that 12% of the lineage of modern Japanese people comes from the Jomon people, and most of them come from the Watarai Yayoi people.
From research, we can conclude that the ancestors of modern Japanese people come from two main sources. One comes from about 18 to 30,000 years ago, when the Chinese civilization in the Central Plains was not yet mature, their ancestors were like a blank sheet of paper, lacking a foundation for development.
Another source was the people of China and Korea from the Eastern Zhou to the Qin and Han dynasties, who brought with them agrarian civilization and bronze tools, in contrast to the previous "Chinese", who eventually became the main local population.
Over time, these two groups gradually merged to form the Yamato nation today.