Quelques considérations sur la relation entre le Paléolithique chinois et le Paléolithique japonais

Abstract

We present a description of the cultural connection between the Chinese and Japanese Paleolithic as the main topic of this article. In this special issue, Takehana and his collaborators discuss the relationship between Paleolithic culture in Hokkaido of north Japan and the coastal Siberian Paleolithic culture. Accordingly, we focus on the Paleolithic cultures of Paleo-Honshu Island and China. This region is made up of three large islands: Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and several islets on their periphery. However, these islands were once connected to each other during the Ice Age and formed one large island: PaleoHonshu Island. Now, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Bohai sea and the Sea of Japan separate these islands from the Asian mainland. It appears that human beings who lived before Homo sapiens must have used the land bridge as the passage from the mainland to this region because their sea-crossing ability was extremely poor. We assume that because Homo sapiens of the Upper Paleolithic also chose narrow and shallow seas that were easy to cross for moving from the Asian mainland to the Paleo-Honshu Island, their migration did not happen at any time other than during the cold period that caused marine regression. In this article, we present three routes connecting the Asian mainland and Paleo-Honshu Island. The first is the southern route that connected southern China and south Kyusyu via Taiwan, the Sakishima Islands, the Yaeyama Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, and the Amami Islands. The second route is the western route that reached Kyushu through the Korean Peninsula and is thought to have passed through the so-called three seas Plain (a vast land area formed by the drying up of the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Bohai Sea). The third route is the northern route that passed through the Sakhalin Island and Hokkaido, reaching the northeastern part of Honshu. We think that gateways from the Asian mainland to the Paleo-Honshu Island might be limited to these three routes. However, the southern route presents a challenge. In the northern part of this series of islands, the Tokara Strait interrupted the passage from the Osumi Islands to the Amami Islands since it was so deep that it never dried up at any time.In addition to those, the distribution of the Paleolithic sites in China had remained roughly south of 40 degrees north latitude until 62,000 years ago. Therefore, it appears that paleolithic culture began to flow into Japan through the northern route after 62,000 years ago. For this reason, it is assumed that befor those years, the only route for cultural diffusion from the Asian mainland to Japan was the western route.