Yayoi people

The Yayoi people (弥生人, Yayoi jin) were an ancient people that immigrated^[1] to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD) and are characterized through Yayoi material culture.^[2][3][4][5] Some argue for an earlier start of the Yayoi period, between 1000 and 800 BC, but this date is controversial.^[1] The people of the Yayoi culture are regarded as the spreaders of agriculture and the Japonic languages throughout the whole archipelago, and were characterized by both local Jōmon hunter-gatherer and mainland Asian migrant ancestry.^[6]

The terms Yayoi and Wajin can be used interchangeably, though "Wajin" (倭人) refers to the people of Wa and "Wajin" (和人) is another name for the modern Yamato people.^[7]

The definition of the Yayoi people is complex: The term Yayoi people describes both farmers and hunter-gatherers exclusively living in the Japanese archipelago, and their agricultural transition. The Yayoi people refers specifically to the mixed descendants of Jomon hunter-gatherers with mainland Asian migrants, which adopted (rice) agriculture and other continental material culture.^[8]

There are several hypotheses about the geographic origin of the mainland Asian migrants:

• immigrants from the Southern or Central Korean Peninsula^[9][10][11]
• immigrants from Jiangnan near the Yangtze River Delta in ancient China^[12]
• multiple origins from various regions of Asia, including Southeast Asia^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

According to Alexander Vovin, the Yayoi were present on the central and southern parts of Korea before they were displaced and assimilated by arriving proto-Koreans.^[18][19] A similar view was raised by Whitman (2012), further noting that the Yayoi are not closely related to the proto-Koreanic speakers and that Koreanic arrived later from Manchuria to Korea at around 300 BC and coexisted with the Japonic-speakers. Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.^[20]

Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, suggested that the Yayoi period in Japan was initiated by immigrants from the Korean Peninsula. Citing research findings, he stated that Yayoi Japan likely received millions of immigrants from Korea. These immigrants, during the Yayoi transition, are believed to have overwhelmed the genetic contribution of the Jomon people, whose population was estimated to be around 75,000 at that time.^[21]

The Yayoi people are considered to be a major contributing strand of the modern Japanese people's DNA. Recent genetic studies on the Yayoi people suggest that they were closely related to populations from the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.^{[22][23][24][25]}

To what extent the Yayoi population impacted the modern Japanese gene pool is still being analyzed. For further information, see Japanese people's Dual ancestry theory.

Early Yayoi immigrants had wholly large and flat features, large facial height, round orbits and large teeth.^[26]

Some historians call the Yayoi people The Sea people (海人族, Kaijinzoku, Amazoku, 海神族, Watatsumizoku) postulating that they migrated to Japan via the sea possibly from elsewhere, especially through the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.

• Japanese people
• Yayoi culture