Origin[edit source]

There are several hypotheses about the origin of the Yayoi people:

• The most popular theory is that they were the people who brought wet rice cultivation to Japan from the Korean peninsula and Jiangnan near the Yangtze River Delta in China.^[2] This is supported by archeological researches and bones found in today southeastern China.^[3]
• Another view is that they are from the northern part of the Korean peninsula. This is because the human bones of the Doigahama ruins resemble the ancient human bones of the northern part of the Korean peninsula, and pottery is similar to the "Engraved band sentence pottery", that is widely used during the Yayoi period and was also discovered in the Sini-Gai culture in the southwestern coastal province of Primorskaya Oblast.^[4]

The theory that Yayoi people have multiple origins has also been suggested and is influential.^[5][6]

The historian Ann Kumar presented genetic and linguistic evidence that some of the Yayoi people were of Austronesian origin. She is believing that they were possibly an elite group from Java.^[7]

According to several Japanese historians, the Yayoi and their ancestors, the Wajin, originated in the today Yunnan province in southern China.^[8] Suwa Haruo considered Wa-zoku (Wajin) to be part of the Baiyue (百越).^[9]

Genetics[edit source]

It is estimated that Yayoi people mainly belonged to Haplogroup O-M176 and Haplogroup O-M122 which are typical for East- and Southeast-Asians.^[10]Mitsuru Sakitani says that Haplogroup O1b1, which is common in Austroasiatic and Kra-Dai people people, and haplogroup O1b2, which is common in today Koreans, Japanese and some Manchu, are the carriers of Yangtze civilization. As the Yangtze civilization declined, O1b1 and some O1b2 migrated to the south, while the remaining O1b2 crossed westward and northerly, to the Shandong peninsula, the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago