My previous post explored the junk shipwrecks and Japanese castaways found along the coast of Northwestern America (Alaska, Canada, the U.S), and also Hawaii. Today we will look into the ancient links between Japan and South America.
Back in 2014 I posted about the Jomons and Ecuadorian Valdivias, and mentioned a paper published in 1962 (Emilio Estrada, Clifford Evans and Betty Meggers, Possible Transpacific Contact on the Coast of Ecuador. Science135,371-372 (1962). DOI:10.1126/science.135.3501.371)
Betty Jane Meggers (1921-2012) suggested that trans-Pacific contact some 5,000 years ago, linking Japan and Ecuador. She based her hypothesis on the similarities between the Japanese Jomon people and the Valdiviann people of Ecuador.
In a paper putting forward this idea was published 60 years ago: Transpacific origin of Valdivia Phase Pottery on Coastal Ecuador (Clifford Evans and Betty J Meggers, XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas de España 1964, Vol 1, 1966), Meggers and her colleague Evans outline how the contact took place:
"Consolidation of evidence relevant to the origin of the Valdivia Phase leads to a reconstruction of events somewhat as follows. Some 5000 years ago the coasts of Japan and western America were occupied by small groups of people who subsisted by fishing and shellfish gathering supplemented by hunting of ter restrial mammals.
In addition to gathering of plants they may have taken initial steps toward cultivation.
Their tools and utensils though differing in details of construction were of similar kinds fishhooks awis choppers flakes sinkers hammerstones indicating a similar level of technological competence and a similar ecological adaptation.
In Japan sites are found not only along the coast but up river valleys into the interior where salmon fishing hunting of terrestrial fauna and an unusually rich edible flora seem to have approximated wild food conditions on the northwest coast of North America. Bones from the refuse indicate that deep sea fishing provided part of the food supply from early times and dugout canoes have been found that provide information on the type of water craft used.
If a boatload of Early Middle Jomon fishermen left the sheltering bays of Kyushu and went out into the sea off the southeastern coast in October or November they would have entered a zone with some of the strongest currents in the northern Pacific running northeastward at 24 43 miles per day. Records for the 40 year period between 1901 1940 tabulate 802 typhoons of which 130 were in October and 67 in November. A canoe caught too far from shore by one of these storms might easily be swept by the combined northeasterly pressure of wind and current far out to sea before control was regained. Even if the occupants retained possession of their paddles they might have been unable to turn back. During the month of November westerly and northerly winds pre dominate in the northern hemisphere and are steadiest and of greatest force between about the 40th and 55th parallels In addition the percentage of gales increases during November in high latitudes occurring at an average frequency of one every 8 10 days over the greater part of the northern Pacific except near coasts. A combination of these forces would have borne a canoe eastward along the great circle route which on a flattened map curves far north of Hawaii Records during the past century demonstrate the feasibility of such a drift vessel reaching land with living passengers after a voyage of 11 months (Sittig 1896 p 530). Indeed the possibility of survival would be stronger for people accustomed to living from the sea than for land oriented agriculturalists of more recent times. Arriving on the Ecuadorian shore the travelers were met or soon found by the local residents who presumably were living much the same kind of life as had been left behind on Kyushu fishing shellfish gathering a little hunting and gathering of plants for food and fiber. The results make it apparent that the newcomers were welcomed and incorporated into the community. In the process they introduced the art of pottery making and very probably new religious practices that are reflected in the Valdivia stone figurines. Other new ideas may also have been incorporated but no tangible evidence has been recognized The Valdivians quickly became skillful potters and in fact the most striking aspect of the ware is its superiority in quality and artistry to pottery not only of contemporary Kyushu but also of other very early ceramic complexes in the New World. It is an ironical fact that attempts to relate Valdivia ceramics to those of Guañape on the coast of Peru Monagrillo on the Pacific coast of Panama or Puerto Hormiga on the Caribbean coast of Colombia involve more tenuous comparative evidence than can be brought to support the inference of Jomon Valdivia connections.
Undoubtedly this situation if properly under stood would shed light on the kind of contact that underlay diffusion of pottery making both north and south from the coast of Ecuador."
The idea sounds interesting, and it also accounts for the "figurines" or female statuetes (Venus) found in Ecuador.
More recently (see Betty J. Meggers. 2005. The Subversive Significance of Transpacific Contact. The NEARA Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter): pp. 22-29.), twenty years ago, Meggers mentions the common variety of Human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV-1), as "another pathology shared by Japanese and Andeans... which is transmitted between adult males and females by sexual contact and between nursing mothers and infants. Today, the highest occurrence in the world of carriers of the HTLV-1 antibody is in Japan, where it reaches a frequency of 6% in Kyushu... Among modern populations in the Americas, it is restricted to the Andean area. Like the parasites, a post-Columbian introduction is ruled out by its presence in the bone marrow of 1500-year-old Chilean mummies... Among modern carriers are the Nanoama, an indigenous group that lives on the lower San Juan River, which drains into the Pacific coast of Colombia."
Meggers added that a study sound genetic similarities between these Nanoma people and the Jomons: "A comparison of the global distribution of 13 genetic markers also identifies the closest affiliation of the Nanoama with people of Jomon ancestry in Japan."
Meggers also suggests that the bottle gourd (Lagenaria sicerania) was brought to America by the Jomons: "an Old World cultigen that appeared in the Americas ca. 6000 B.P.—was among the Jomon introductions is supported by its presence in Japan by the Initial Jomon Period."
Regarding the ceramics, Meggers pointed out "the discovery of another intrusive complex of similar age on the north coast of Colombia, known as San Jacinto."
However, not everyone agrees with this theory. For instance, Scott, G. R. et al., (2021). Peopling the Americas: Not “Out of Japan.” PaleoAmerica, 7(4), 309–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2021.1940440, refute it, without mentioning the Jomons or Ecuador and Colombia. Instead it focused on stone knapping techniques which seem similar in both Jomon Japan and North America:
"A widely accepted model for the peopling of the Americas postulates a source population in the Northeast Asian maritime region, which includes northern Japan. The model is based on similarities in stone artifacts (stemmed points) found in North American sites dating as early as 15,000 years ago and those of comparable age in Japan and neighboring regions of Northeast Asia. Here we show, on the basis of data and analyses in biological anthropology, that the people who made stemmed points in northern Japan (labeled “Incipient Jomon” in the archaeological literature) represent an unlikely source population for the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere."
Even the origin of the ceramics style is disputed, (Kanomata Y, Marcos J, Popov A, Lazin B, Tabarev A. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/new-data-on-early-pottery-traditions-in-south-america-the-san-pedro-complex-ecuador/8885FD3A582F285F93728325C4945B66. Antiquity. 2019;93(369):e17. doi:10.15184/aqy.2019.56), says it originated in a pre-Valdivian culture in Ecuador: "These new data on San Pedro pottery from Real Alto demonstrate its stratigraphical, typological and chronological identity as one of the earliest ceramic forms in the Americas, and they confirm the existence of Early Formative cultural variability in Ecuador." Meaning they may seem similar Jomon and Valdivian, but they have different origins.
Regarding genetics, as mentioned in my 2014 post, there are similarities regarding what then was known as the Y-chromosome haplogroup C3* (nomenclature has changed since then, but the concept is still valid). C3* is rare in America, it is found among the Jomons and also among Ecuadorian and Colombian people, but not elsewhere in America. Surprisingly, the Japanese C3* variant is different to the one found in Colombia and Ecuador.
The American variant is now known as subclade C-P39 (formerly C3b). A paper (Insights into the origin of rare haplogroup C3* Y chromosomes in South America from high-density autosomal SNP genotyping, Mezavilla et al., 2015) studied the matter: "C3* Y chromosomes were discovered in two nearby Native American populations from Ecuador. Since this haplogroup is otherwise nearly absent from the Americas but is common in East Asia, and an archaeological link between Ecuador and Japan is known from 6Kya, an additional migration 6Kya was suggested. Here, we... evaluate three hypotheses: a recent migration from Japan, a single pulse of migration from Japan 6Kya, and no migration after the First Americans... Our simulations revealed good power to detect recent admixture, and that ≥5% admixture 6Kya ago could be detected. However, in the experimental data we saw no evidence of gene flow from Japan to Ecuador. In summary, we can exclude recent migration and probably admixture 6Kya as the source of the C3* Y chromosomes in Ecuador, and thus suggest that they represent a rare founding lineage lost by drift elsewhere." The map below is from this paper.
They rejected the Jomon admixture 6,000 years ago yet mentioned that "The estimated TMRCA for the combined Ecuadorian C3* chromosomes was 5.0–6.2Kya. The finding of this haplogroup in Ecuador was surprising because C3* is otherwise unreported from the Americas (apart from one example in Alaska), but is widespread and common in East Asia."
The sensitivity of the study is low. Imagine a boatload of Jomon people mixing into Native Americans, they would represent a low percentage of the total population, the study is not sensitive enough to measure low introgression rates: "The power to detect ancient admixture at these levels therefore depends on the sensitivity to detect the reduced admixture in the present-day population. For example, if 0.1% mean population admixture can be detected in the present-day population, we have ∼80% power to detect 5% ancient admixture and ∼100% power to detect 10% ancient admixture. If, instead, we could only detect 0.5% mean admixture in the present-day population, we have ∼0 power to detect 5% ancient admixture and ∼35% power to detect 10% ancient admixture... Immediately after a pulse of 10% migration, almost all individuals in the Admixed population have >5% and >1% admixture. 6Ky later, in the present-day population, about 1% of the Admixed individuals retain 5% admixture, and about 17% retain 1% admixture. In all simulations, negligible admixture is detected in the Control population. Overall, we have good power to detect 10% admixture that took place 6Kya, and some power to detect 5% ancient admixture." The authors indicate that "had good power to detect 1% recent admixture and 10% ancient admixture, with some power to detect 5% ancient admixture" which seems rather high, surely the impact of Jomon people would have been lower, probably it was amplified by genetic drift. Perhaps their Asian genes added some immunity to the Amerindians and this gave them a selective benefit when confronted with Spanish-introduced diseases after 1492.
It is interesting to point out that the Valdivia people lived (see google map) very close to the spot (Manta) where Inca Tupac Yupanqui learned that people in big boats came to trade with the local natives, and which have been assumed to be Polynesians. But, what if they were Japanese? Merchants who had kept up the transpacific contact for millennia...
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