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Japan's oldest partial human skeleton found in Okinawa

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Only a matter of time before the US forces in Okinawa get the blame for this one too :-)

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Knock it off Harry;

I met a guy while staying in Naha, and he told me he had repelled down into a cave, that it appeared NO one even knew existed at that time, and went to report it to the local authorities...it was quite a job to get them to even pay attention. He mentioned about all kinds of artifacts that were present...I wonder if this is the same place. I imagine it IS.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

So, do they think it is a Japanese person? Was Okinawa Japanese territory some 30,000 years ago? It's not 'Japan's oldest skeleton'. It's the oldest skeleton found in Japan.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

@Disillusioned

Well, currently Okinawa is Japan so it's Japanese history in that sense.

Also, gentic tests show that Okinawan and Japanese people are nearly identical so this can help prove the theory that the same nomadic group populated the Ryukyu Chain and the Japanese Archapelgio.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

These comments are trying too hard to politicize a 30.000 years old skeleton, I don't think anyone is pushing a political agenda with this kind of stuff.

Also, even older artifacts of stone made by humans have been recovered in Japan, even in mainland Japan, so this is not the oldest sign of human habitation found in Japan, merely the oldest actual human. Japan was actually one of the first offshore archipelagos to be inhabited by people as far as we know, only Australia was older.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Japan was actually one of the first offshore archipelagos to be inhabited by people as far as we know, only Australia was older. still genetic studies on over 6000 skulls from all over the world have shown all modern humans originated from Africa , sreading out some 50,000yrs ago, and did not evolve from different locations as some previously thought. so we are all related and not gentically unique to a location as some would believe.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I've never heard of anyone who seriously believes that humans just magically popped up in different locations at one point. Its fairly well established that we all descend from the populations spreading out of Africa, what I said was that Japan was one of the first places that was offshore but which humans made boats to sail out to and colonize. And also, modern Japanese most likely aren't descendents of these first arrivals, several waves of colonizers have arrived since, the Yayoi people from Korea and China around 200 BC being the most recent major one. At least, thats a popular theory.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

the Yayoi people from Korea and China around 200 BC being the most recent major one.

During the Yayoi period, did Chinese and Koreans have ships to sail across the sea?  It is well known that Japanese have different gene from Chinese and Koreans.

-4 ( +2 / -6 )

It is well known that Japanese have different gene from Chinese and Koreans. sorry Tina your brainwashing has been proven wrong through science and genetic evidence, It is now believed that the modern Japanese descend mostly from the interbreeding of the Jōmon Era people (15,000-500 BCE), composed of the above Ice Age settlers, and a later arrival from China and/or Korea. Around 500 BCE, the Yayoi people crossed the see from Korea to Kyushu, bringing with them a brand new culture, based on wet rice cultivation and horses.

DNA tests have confirmed the likelihood of this hypothesis. About 54% of paternal lineages and 66% the maternal lineages have been identified as being of Sino-Korean origin. so the imagined theory that Japanese are somehow genetically unique because they're an island national is just that , imagined. ..... http://www.wa-pedia.com/history/origins_japanese_people.shtml

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Tina is not totally wrong but she is not very close to right either.

There is a notable genetic variation separating Japanese/Ryukyu peoples from the rest of Asia but as WTFJapan pointed out there is a lot that links them.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Tina Watanabe probably is referring to a genetic marker:

"The researchers began to realize that YA might prove useful when an initial study of Asian populations revealed that only men from Japan seemed to harbor the genetic marker. In Taiwan and Korea, for example, not a single man was found to possess YAP, Hammer and Horai reported in the American Journal of Genetic Studies suggest that Japan s original inhabitants, the Jomon, mixed with a later culture, the Yayoi. The Jomon's closest descendants today inhabit Japan's northern and southern islands."

http://www.pitt.edu/~annj/courses/notes/jomon_genes.html

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

There is a notable genetic variation separating Japanese/Ryukyu peoples from the rest of Asia but  there are notable genetic markers in many strains of humans, but as science has shown us Japanese are genetic descendants of many peoples of Asia that ultimately date back to Africa, so yes we were all black at some point in our ancestry. what I find pathetic is these nationalist right nutters seem to want to believe that theyre somehow genetically different, special , superior from the rest of the human genome, science once again has proven this myth wrong.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

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