| The Paleolithic Age in Okinawa / The Paleolithic Age in Okinawa | 2/4 |
Paleolithic Humans and Culture of the Ryukyu Archipelago
| It has been said that humans emerged on earth about 40 million years ago. In Japan, at the Iwajuku site in Gunma Prefecture, flaked stone tools dated about 30,000 years ago have been excavated. In all there are about 5,000 sites in Japan from the Paleolithic age. While tools have been found in abundance from the Paleolithic era, human remains have not been excavated in any great quantity and there is very little concrete knowledge about the Stone Age humans. The total picture of Paleolithic humans was made substantially clearer with the discovery of the Minatogawa remains found in 1967 in Okinawa. It was a complete fossil find showing the skull, hands, and feet of a modern human and was dated to 17.000 years ago. This discovery allowed researchers to get a clear and concrete idea of the appearance of Paleolithic humans and contributed to a great advance in research on the Stone Age. There have been finds of human fossils in other parts of Okinawa as well; the Yamashita Dojin human in Naha City, the Shimoji-genjin human on Kume-jima Island, and the Pinza-abu human on Miyakojima Island. |
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