Scientists Compared Japanese DNA To Every Ancient Civilization — Only One Matched

Where do the Japanese people really come from? Popular videos claim that DNA matches one lost civilization, but the science tells a richer story. In this documentary, we follow ancient DNA from a woman buried on Rebun Island 3,800 years ago to the great Kofun-era tombs, and trace how three ancestral streams (the Jomon hunter-gatherers, the Yayoi rice farmers, and later Kofun-era migrants) blended into the people of modern Japan. We also look at the Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples, the Okhotsk connection, the "lost tribes of Israel" theory, and the open questions scientists are still trying to answer. References: Hanihara, K. (1991). "Dual structure model for the population history of the Japanese." Japan Review, 2, 1-33. Kanzawa-Kiriyama, H., et al. (2019). "Late Jomon male and female genome sequences from the Funadomari site in Hokkaido, Japan." Anthropological Science, 127(2), 83-108. Kanzawa-Kiriyama, H., et al. (2017). "A partial nuclear genome of the Jomons who lived 3000 years ago in Fukushima, Japan." Journal of Human Genetics, 62, 213-221. McColl, H., et al. (2018). "The prehistoric peopling of Southeast Asia." Science, 361(6397), 88-92. Cooke, N. P., et al. (2021). "Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations." Science Advances, 7(38), eabh2419. Jinam, T., et al. (2012). "The history of human colonization of the Japanese archipelago, as seen from genetic studies." Journal of Human Genetics, 57, 787-795. Watanabe, Y., and Ohashi, J. (2023). "Modern Japanese ancestry-derived variants reveal the formation process of the current Japanese regional gradations." iScience, 26(3), 106130. Sato, T., et al. (2021). "Whole-genome sequencing of a 1,000-year-old Ryukyuan..." and Robbeets, M., et al. (2021). "Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages." Nature, 599, 616-622. Yamaguchi, T. (Kaifu, M., et al.) and Kaifu, M., et al. (2016-2019). Studies on Paleolithic Okinawan remains and the Yonaguni crossing experiment (National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo). Shinoda, K. (2019). Research on ancient Japanese mitochondrial DNA, National Museum of Nature and Science. Government of Japan (2019). Act on Promotion of Measures to Realize a Society that Respects the Pride of Ainu People. #JapaneseDNA #AncientDNA #JomonPeople #YayoiPeriod #KofunPeriod #AncientJapan #Ainu #HumanOrigins #Genetics #Archaeology #DocumentaryScience #History #Anthropology #PopulationGenetics #JapanHistory