著者

PALMER Edwina

出版者

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

雑誌

Nichibunken Japan review : journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.47-75, 2007-01-01

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This discussion attempts to reconcile various seemingly contradictory research results regarding the origins of Jōmon Japanese. The focus is on testing Oppenheimer’s theory of Holocene outmigration from the former continent of Sundaland in present-day Southeast Asia against the evidence relating to Jōmon Japan and the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis for Austronesian language dispersal. It is argued here that postglacial flooding of Sundaland prompted some former inhabitants to migrate from around ten or eleven thousand years ago, and that they followed the expanding belt of lucidophyllous forest, eventually to settle in what is now Japan during the Jōmon Period, in accordance with the theory of regional pockets of “laurilignosa culture.” It is stressed that some of these people were probably speakers of Austronesian languages. Further, it is argued that the “Out of Taiwan” movement of Austronesian language speakers could have occurred later as a migratory counterflow accompanying the Holocene maximum, and that an “Out of Sunda” scenario of migration to Japan in the Jōmon period is not necessarily entirely incompatible with such an “Out of Taiwan” theory.