The haplogroup D, a male lineage mainly distributed in Japan, Tibet, and the Andamanese islands, is the third oldest human Y haplogroup in the world, only younger than haplogroup A and B. Considering that they entered East Asia by crossing the Iranian Plateau, and its sibling subclade, haplogroup E, are distributed all over the Middle East, it is possible that haplogroup D has also been living in Mesopotamia between the two rivers for a very long time. The ancient Sumerians were called the "black-headed ones", I read that some ethnic groups in Tibet also called themselves the "black-headed people", which is too hard to be a coincidence.
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The ancient Sumerian statue and the face of the Jomon, notice how similarly the shape of eyes and the way they gaze are alike.
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Ancient Sumerian artifacts.
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Jomon-Period artifacts
When I look at the Jomon Japanese culture, it always gives me a strong vibe that somehow they are related to ancient Sumerians in mysterious ways.
You provide shrewd observations and insights on the potential link between the Sumerians and Jomon people. This is actually a very hot topic in the Japanese archaeology/anthropology society today, and there is now increasingly supportive evidence that there is a connection between Jomon people and the Sumerians. I'll provide some interesting similarities between the Sumerian and Jomon cultures below.
1) Similar grammatical structure and syntax. Both Sumerian and the Japanese language are agglutinative languages, which is an extremely rare form of language. Similar to the Japanese language, the Sumerian language writes both vowel and consonant sounds.
In addition, this is not well-known outside of Japan, but before the Japanese started using the Chinese characters, there were many other writing systems used especially in Shinto rituals. One of them is ‘Jindai-Moji’, which literally means ‘characters of the age of the gods’. Jindai-Moji has many forms, and some of them look just like Sumerian alphabets.
2) Similar mythology and cultures. The Sumerian religion is similar to Shinto. The Sumerians worshiped nature, and their religion was polytheistic like Shinto in Japan. The Sumerians worshiped Anu (the sky god), Enlil (god of wind, air and storms), and Enki (god of water). This is very similar to Japanese mythology, in which the three most important gods are Amaterasu (god of Sun), Tsukuyomi (god of the moon), and Susanoo (the god of storm).
Furthermore, the three sacred treasures in the Sumerian (and old Babylonian) cultures are 1) mirror, 2) necklace, and 3) sword. This is similar to the Imperial regalia of Japan, which are 1) mirror Yata no Kagami, 2) Yasakani no Magatama (necklace piece), and 3) sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi. An interesting similarity between the Sumerian and Japanese mythology is that in the Japanese mythology, Susanoo obtains the sword (Kusanagi no Tsurugi) after fighting and defeating a giant eight-headed snake. In the Sumerian mythology, the sword is obtained after defeating a seven-headed serpent.
Another intersecting find is that many of the stone henges and giant stones in Japan have petroglyphs carved on them, and some of them have Sumerian alphabets carved on them. It is possible that the Jomon people developed the Sumerian language starting from these petroglyphs, or some Sumerians migrated to Japan and carved their alphabets on these stones. For a very long time, the scholars in Japan did not pay much attention to these petroglyphs on the stones, but scholars from Europe and even South America started reporting the same petroglyphs in their archeological sites, and the scholars in Japan finally started paying attention to this recently, so more research is coming in the future!
Also, the Imperial Seal of Japan (16-petal flower symbol) can be found in both Sumerian and Mesopotamian cultures, which makes me wonder if some Sumerians later migrated to Japan and formed the Imperial house in Japan. Historically, emperors in Japan were called ‘Sumera Mikoto’, which literally means ‘god’ of ‘Sumera’, which might come from ‘Sumer’.
Another similarity is how both cultures revered and utilized reed. The Sumerians called their land ‘ki-en-gi’, which means ‘place of the Lords of the reed’. In ancient Japanese literature, the Japanese called their own land ‘Ashihara no Nakatsukuni’, which literally means ‘middle country of reed beds’.
3) Jomon people migrated to other parts of the world and established civilizations outside Japan. The Jomon civilization spanned roughly from 10,500 – 300 BCE. The Jomons were excellent sailors – their wooden boats have been discovered, and scholars from Japan actually tested if they could sail from Taiwan to Okinawa using this boat, and they were successful (225 km distance!). Jomon-style pots have been found on not only on the Korean peninsula and Asia but also in South America. There was one volcanic eruption that likely contributed to the spread of Jomon people to other parts of the world. In 5250 BCE, the Kikai Caldera in the southern part of Kyushu exploded. This explosion is known as Akahoya or Kikai-Akahoya eruption, and this eruption is considered the most explosive and largest eruption in the past 10,000 years of human history. This eruption decimated the Jomon population and culture on the Kyushu island, and some Jomon people migrated to the northern part of Japan, but some moved to other parts of the world. Jomon pots have been found on the Korean peninsula, and even an extremely similar-looking female figurine has been found from a Vinča culture archeology site in Southeast Europe. It is possible that Jomon people migrated to the Mesopotamia region and started the Sumerian civilization. It is said that the Sumerian civilization was started by ‘black-headed people from the east’. Interestingly, it is considered that the Sumerian civilization started around the time of this eruption (i.e. 5300-5000 BCE; no one knows the exact date, of course).
4) Possible encounter of aliens in both Sumerian and Jomon civilization. The Sumerian mythology talks about Annunaki coming to the earth. If you look at the picture of Jomon dogu figurine, you can see how exotic it looks for such an old civilization. Vaughn Greene from the US, after analyzing Jomon dogu in Japan, concluded that there are over 30 points of similarity between these dogu statues and modern space suits (lenses, rivets, belts, quick release pins, earphones, rubber cuffs, etc.). The Japanese mythology is also filled with encounter with extraterrestrial beings.
This connection between the Sumerians and Jomon (Japanese people) was actually first pointed out by the German doctor/scholar Engelbert Kämpfer, who visited Japan in the 17th century, then wrote and published ‘The History of Japan (
Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan).’
This is an active area of research, and hopefully more studies will be available in English in the future.
