DAInsight - 50 Jahre Welterbekonvention "Jomon"

For this evening, Maike Wagner has brought us a film trip to the north of Japan, in collaboration with colleagues in Japan and Germany, the documentary film The Hokkaido Universe takes us to the Japanese island of the same name in the North Pacific, one of the oldest cultural regions in Japan. About 15,000 years ago, its inhabitants have switched from wild animal hunting to intensive use of rich marine resources. For thousands of years, fish, seals, whales, algae and shells have been the basis of life for the people living there. The film will bring us closer to their invention spirit, the wealth of the cultural heritage of Hokkaido and the prehistoric Jomon cities recorded in the UNESCO World Heritage List not so long ago, namely last year. But first, of course, the obligatory note that Ms. Wagner will be available for questions again afterwards. Today we will do it a little differently because we are, as you will have noticed, in a webinar environment. This makes it easier for you to ask questions, but you can simply use the chat function. Together with Ms. Wagner, we will then go through your messages after the film as usual. With that, enough from me. Now look forward to the film trip to Hokkaido. Dear Ms. Wagner, would you like to give us a little more on the way? Thank you very much, Mr. Notroff. Just briefly. Japan has a total of 20 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Tonight we are talking about the group of 17 archaeological sites recorded in the last list, which are grouped under the short title of Jomon-da-Pen. Eleven are located in the north of the island of Honshu, six in the south of the island of Hokkaido. We have been working with colleagues on Hokkaido since 2008, and have experienced their passionate commitment to recognition as a World Heritage Site for many years. And we think you should get to know them too. That's why I suggest, dear viewers, we'll start right away. Please start the film. Because the sea surrounds us everywhere. The coastal stripes on which people live are narrow. When the sea level rises, they lose their land and their way of life, their tradition and their history. Old civilizations sink into oblivion. But on an island in the northern Pacific Ocean, the inhabitants resist oblivion. Will archaeologists succeed in uncovering traces, understanding history and preserving treasures? Or will they remain undiscovered and perish, finally destroyed? The Japanese island chain stretches over more than 3,000 kilometers on the east side of the Asian mainland. Hokkaido is the northernmost of the four main islands and the largest prefecture in Japan. The island is as large as Austria, but has only 5.3 million inhabitants. About 25,000 of them are Ainu, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido. Although Hokkaido accounts for 20% of Japan's area, only 5% of the Japanese population lives here. Most, about 2 million, live in the capital Sapporo. North Hokkaido is located almost 800 kilometers south of Berlin. Nevertheless, there is a rough climate there. In winter, the temperatures drop to minus 20 degrees. On the other hand, South Hokkaido, on the same latitude as Rome and Barcelona, has hot summers, but experiences meters of high snow in winter. Hokkaido is surrounded by three seas. The Japanese Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. Isolated by the sea, Hokkaido seems to be on the edge of culture and history. In Japan, Russia and China. But when you stand on Hokkaido, it looks completely different. This is Hokkaido. Hokkaido is a crossroad between the north and the south. The north is connected to Siberia and Russia from Sakhalin. And the south is connected to Honshu, the center of Japan. That's it. For a long time, people from all directions have come together here. The port city of Hakodate is the southern gate to Hokkaido. Hakodate was one of three ports that opened to trade with foreigners in Japan in 1855 after a long isolation. Americans and Europeans discovered Hokkaido for themselves. From this time, the 19th century, the most famous building monuments that are still a magnet for Japanese and foreign tourists. I come from Aomori every year. I love Hakodate. There are many buildings here. When I take a walk here, I feel like I'm in a foreign country. I drink beer almost every day. There's a Hakodate festival today. I'm looking forward to seeing the fireworks. Another special thing about the Hakodate region is its ancient history and archaeology. Chiharu Arbe is an archaeologist and one who is responsible for the cultural heritage of the prefecture of Hokkaido. Around Hakodate, there are Catholic churches, Russian churches, Christian churches, Buddhist shrines, and Shinto shrines. There are many religious buildings here. Surprisingly, they are harmonious and harmonious. This is very rare in the world. But where are the footsteps of the first settlers? Hakodate is also home to the Minami Kayabe community with its 87 sites of Jomon culture. Jomon is a prehistoric culture that plays a very special role in Japan and in the history of Hokkaido. The great task of archaeologists and settlers is to explore and preserve this culture. The German Archaeological Institute supports them. Since 2008, the scientists have been looking for answers for a deeper understanding of human history. What does Jomon mean? Did the Jomon people leave traces that we can read? The Japanese word Jomon means string pattern and denotes the prints of string from plant fibers on the surface of clay pots. Only a single short, twisted piece of string is necessary for this. If you roll it over the soft clay, you get a large pattern, the illusion of a fabric. Small changes in the string create a completely different pattern. You only need to change the direction of the twist. Or tie the string in the middle. For more than 13,000 years, the inhabitants of Hokkaido formed string pattern ceramics. Because this type of pottery is the best preserved and the most widespread heritage, people and their culture followed. Even the entire prehistoric period of Japan, the Jomon period. What the Jomon people cooked in these pots is less well known. This has to be excavated from kitchen waste and remains, which lie in many places as powerful layer packages. This is the Irie Kaizuka. The Kaizuka is on both sides of where I stand. Such prehistoric mussel piles were created on places along the coast, where people have harvested and fed land for many years, sometimes even centuries, with molluscs and sea urchins. Here in Irie, they built houses right on top. Like other coastal peoples, the Jomon also buried their dead in mussel piles or covered the graves with oyster shells and mussels. Symbols of fertility and rebirth. In Kitagogane, there is a settlement below the burial site. To this day, the spring spills under walnut trees. The stream bed was plastered with broken planks and slabs. If they are not made of clay, stone or mussels, traces of the Jomon people are difficult to discover. It lies on the sour soil. Hokkaido is located on the west side of the Pacific Fire Ring, like all of Japan. At this point, the Pacific lithosphere plate dives under the Eurasian, clogs up and the tensions unload in explosive volcanic eruptions, such as catastrophic earthquakes and deadly giant waves, tsunamis. The fire under the surface is noticeable. Whirlpools and hot water rise in many places. The cones of old volcanoes and crater lakes shape the topography of the island. An ancient, gigantic crater lake forms today's volcanic bay. Here lies the Komagatake, whose eruption has shaken the Hakodate region for thousands of years and still threatens it today. Its ash has made the soil on large areas acidic and often completely destroyed organic material. Not even the skeletons remained in the graves. Traces of wooden posts are hardly recognizable in the house graves. But one material resists the acid in the soil. Paint. The paint tree contains a resinous secret in its bark. The juice can be collected in a vessel. By heating, the water contained evaporates. What remains is ready-to-use clear coat, which is suitable for elastic things because of its rubbery content. If you stir Zenobo pigments into the paint, it turns red. On any carrier material, the paint hardens at 25 degrees in about 24 hours. The finished surface shines silk-matte and imposing. Paint protects the coated material from water, acid, pollen and pests and makes it strong and scratch-resistant. The Jomon people knew this 9,000 years ago. In his grave, only the paint remained from the carrier of the paint armor. A unique find. The oldest known red paint in the world. The archaeologists saved it with extreme effort and saved it in their laboratory. Volcanic ash also serves the scientists as a time marker. Geologists were able to determine the dates of the greatest eruptions of the Komagatake. In the 7th millennium BC, it erupted twice. Archaeologists find the layers of ash in the excavation profiles. This is the volcanic ash. This is the Komagatake F volcanic ash from about 6,300 years ago. This is the Komagatake G volcanic ash. This volcanic ash erupted about 6,500 years ago. This black surface is the Jomon period. We are now standing on the 7,000 to 10,000-year-old surface. The Ofune settlement was created after the great eruptions and food remains have been preserved well. In 1996, Mutsumitsuboi and her team cleared the settlement and an excavation site. This is the Ofune Settlement. As a result of the excavation, we found over 100 vertical hole settlements with a depth of more than 2 meters, as well as more than 100 vertical hole settlements with a depth of more than 4,000 meters. We also found a forest road and a grave. Inside, we found a lot of tuna bones, and the fangs of the Ottos. We know that the Ofune Settlement was supported by a rich ocean. We were worried about how to activate the Ofune Settlement as a symbol of this town. The Ofune open-air museum in Minamikayabe is still there today, but the only things left of the finds are pictures and a pigeon flute made of clay. Our office was on the other side, and we were organizing the remains after the excavation. In December 2002, the office caught on fire, and everything burned down. I was an assistant in the excavation. Just before the fire, I was in the middle of a high-temperature period. That night, there was a fire. I was surprised, and I ran here. I knew where the pigeon flute was, so I went right ahead and picked it up. The next day, after the fire, I gathered all the excavators and talked to them. Although the finds burned down, the feelings for Jomon culture will never die. This is just the beginning. That's what we talked about, and we decided to build a new Jomon Center right after the fire. But a museum needs a symbol, and that's why they're looking for an old find. A farmer who harvested potatoes on a summer day in 1975 in Shobonaino thought she had a particularly thick potato in her hand. But when she scratched the ground, the bud looked at her. She had discovered the head of a dogu, a clay figure. In 1979, the government of this dogu gave it the title of an important cultural asset and had it incorporated into the treasure of the town hall of Minamikajabe. Now the figure becomes the most important research object. At a height of 41.5 cm, it is the largest Jomon-era clay figure in Japan. Like a patient, it was inserted into a computer tomograph. The pictures show that fragments were placed. The figure should break in the ritual so that the patterns remain on the shoulder. Presumably, the ritual was about fertility and the hope that new life would grow from each of its parts. What gender does the figure have? The collar is very feminine. Here is the pregnancy line. I think this dogu is feminine. The dogu is said to be feminine, but this dogu has a very wide shoulder and is very firm. It also has a beard, so it may be male. Which one? We will never know. Androgyne in particular makes the figure unique and mysterious. When the archaeologists examined the site closely, they discovered that the figure came from a grave. Remains of a stone circle were nearby. Today a forest covers the entire area. But another stone circle from the Jomon period is better preserved. Washinoki, on the north side of the Komagatake volcano. This is the stone circle of Washinoki. This stone circle was built a little high. If the highway did not pass through this place, this stone circle would probably not have been discovered. On top of this stone circle, the Komagatake volcano rock is about 1.5 meters thick. The stone circle is about 37 meters in diameter, the largest on Hokkaido. More than 600 rubble was dragged by the Katsura River and placed here. The large circle was empty when the archaeologists discovered it. A large stone vessel was placed on the edge of the earth. But next to it, under the small circle filled with yellow sand, there were graves. The stone circles served as meeting places to strengthen the cohesion of the community. The large circle was reserved for ceremonies. In the smaller circles around, the deceased were said goodbye. During their feast, one animal played a special role. Calamari made of clay were found in the graves around the large stone circle of Washinoki. They look like stuffed calamari, the local specialty of Mori City at the foot of the hill. Small calamari stuffed with sweet rice and cooked in a broth made from soy sauce and rice wine are called ikameshi. Because they taste cold, they are a popular travel snack and are sold in small boxes near the train station. This is the famous ikameshi of Mori City. Delicious! Grilled or dried, almost every meal on Hokkaido belongs to it. From the arrival of the catch to the departure of the transporters who deliver restaurants and markets, not even 20 minutes pass. But in the old kitchen waste, archaeologists find only a few traces of calamari, because they are soft animals. The only thing left is the extremely hard beak. It is sharp like a knife, but very small and easy to overlook. Circular installations and graves were also found in Kakinoshima. The traces of older rituals are better preserved there. 6,500 years ago, adults took the memories of their children with them to the grave. Imprints of their feet on clay tablets. At the same place, 5,000 years ago, the inhabitants created a holy place. A huge, U-shaped earth wall with masses of clay shards. Yuichi Fukuda and his team investigated the wall. The Mori Do Iko The Mori Do Iko is a very important relic representing the Kakinoshima Ruins. The Mori Do Iko is 190 meters long and 120 meters wide. This is a relic with a large cut in the middle of the clay, and soil around it. If you look at it crosswise, you can see that it is supposed to look like this. There is no other place on Hokkaido that has traces of so many phases of the Jomon period. From the first lacquer strings 9,000 years ago, to the prints of the children's feet, large settlements and wall installations, to the stone circle graves, the finds date back a total of about 6,000 years. Where, if not here, was the planned Jomon Museum supposed to be built? When the statue of Japan's national treasure became a national treasure in 2007, the museum building was sealed. In 2011, the governor of Hokkaido and the mayor of Hakodate opened the Jomon Culture Center. From the gallery, you can look far over the Kakinoshima site, the coast and the Pacific Ocean. The Jomon Center is a museum, but not only that. Research and restoration is carried out in the treasure deposit. In the visitor center, children and adults can recreate the vessels and faces of the past themselves and take them home with them. The archaeologists and residents of Minamikayabe are proud of their Jomon Center, which attracts tourists from Japan and all over the world. They have achieved their most important goal, but they are far from finished. When I go up the stairs, I see a plate next to it. This plate has the message of the end and the beginning. This is where the new Jomon Townscape of Minamikayabe begins. This is what I wanted to do here. Start with what? What else can you aspire to for a national treasure, a finished museum? The step into the wide world. That's the plan. Jomon of Hokkaido is to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What makes Jomon of Hokkaido unique? What is its universal value for the entire world community? To answer these questions, we have to go back to the Ice Age. The sea level was 120 meters lower than it is today. The water, frozen to ice, covered most of Europe and North America. There was seaside on the earth's surface. Hokkaido and Sakhalin formed a huge peninsula in East Asia. Mammoths, deer, horses and other animals moved south in the winter to the end of the peninsula. The Ice Age hunters followed the wild. In the center of Hokkaido, they found the best raw material for their weapons. Obsidian, a rock made of lava with a low mass content of water and carbon dioxide, which quickly rises and cools down in water. When the hunters moved north again in the summer, they took obsidian devices with them to the Asian mainland. Klingons from Shirataki are particularly attractive because the sparkling black obsidian has blood-red imprints there. In the Shirataki Geopark, scientists examine the traces of the old obsidian mining. Naoto Seshimo and his colleagues have collected thousands of old pieces of debris and found that about 90% of the material was left lying as waste on the mountain. Only the innermost, flawless cores were taken by the hunters. He himself beats Klingon to understand the technology. Together with obsidian devices, the archaeologists at the Taisho 3 excavation site also found ceramic vessels that belong to the oldest ceramics in the world. Inside, microscopic small remains of fish fat were glued. Did the fishermen and hunters on Hokkaido invent the potter? When the earth warms up and the ice melts at the end of the ice age, the sea level rises between 18 and 8,000 years ago today by about 120 meters. That's 1.20 meters in 100 years. Finally, the sea separates Hokkaido from Sakhalin and both from the mainland. Hokkaido becomes the island between three seas, as we know it today. The habitat of the mammoth fauna becomes smaller. For this, the habitat of salmon, seals and seabirds expands. People move to the waterfront and make more use of the richer resources of the sea and rivers. For the preparation of food and the conservation of fat, the hunters needed clay vessels and invented them. In the time between 17 and 14,000 years ago today, clay vessels were first burned in several places in East Asia. Hokkaido was one of them. How and when hunters and collectors spread the technique of vessel making to Northern Europe will be shown by the research of the coming years. The Jomon period began with the pots, and the dependence on marine resources became a characteristic feature of the Jomon economy. Pots with string prints from about 2,300 years ago disappear on Hokkaido. New pottery techniques and ornaments appear. But did this also change life? What was cooked in the pots now? What did the houses look like in which these oil lamps burned? Much is still unknown, still undiscovered. Piece by piece, the scientists put the fragments together into a picture. On the coasts in the north of Hokkaido, the first signs of a new culture appear. It is at home around the Okhotsk Sea and is named after it. While figurines and amber from Sakhalin Island are now also buried on Hokkaido. Bone carvings show animals that they buried. Owls, foxes, seals, snakes and bears. Their flat, but ten meters long, bark-covered houses they built well protected in coastal forests. The Okhotsk people can also be seen on the decor of their clay vessels. Most of the ceramic vessels of the Okhotsk culture are grey and relatively easy to make. What makes them particularly ornamental are the applied decorations. Layered, fine line patterns. Beautiful pots, but what was inside? At the Hamanaka 2 excavation site, an international team uncovers the traces of the Okhotsk Sea Hunters. Hamanaka is located on the island of Rebun, a remnant of the ice age land bridge between Hokkaido and Sakhalin. Christian Leipel digs earth from the layers of the old settlement in search of plant remains. Heavy material such as sand sinks to the ground, but the light plant remains are flushed with water through a pipe onto three different fine sieves. The larger remains, such as charcoal, remain at the top. At the bottom, the small seeds. In this way, he finds seeds of wild edible plants, such as grapes and kiwi. The big surprise, however, are hundreds of grain barley. Barley is a grain that was domesticated in West Asia about 11,000 years ago from a wild grass and spread from there all over the world. Today, barley is used worldwide in breweries and breweries for the production of beer and whiskey. So also on Hokkaido. Under the microscope, it can be seen that all the grains from Hamanaka are well rounded and have cross-grain. The typical characteristics for barley. And what does this barley mean for the cultural history of Hokkaido? The archaeologists consult a colleague in Berlin who knows and collects grain from all over the world and all times. Reinder Nef. In his comparative collection, he shows the practical advantage of raw grain. Then I'll show you how easy it is to thresh. Hit it with a thresher. And the grains, yes, it's the same on the threshing floor. Push a little and you're done. But with spelt barley, it's a bit difficult, because the inner spelts are almost overgrown with the grain. You actually still need a process to remove these grains from the remaining spelts. Spelt barley is more laborious, but more robust. It is easier to store, because the spelts protect the grain from moisture and corn beetles. What time do they actually come from, Christian? We dated the seeds directly. They date between 500 and 1,000 years after Christ. They come from cultures that are associated with the Hotskultur. It was assumed for a long time that this culture was a pure hunter-gatherer culture. This is the first time that we have found a large amount of grain seeds in this excavation site. This indicates that the barley was part of the diet. However, it is not yet clear whether the Okhotskys brought their barley stock from the mainland or grown it on the island. Palinologists can determine this. Pavel Tarasov examines which vegetation covered the island of Rebun when the Okhotskys lived here. In the sediment layers at the base of the Kushu Lake, the pollen of the plants from this time are deposited and can be identified. Tree pollen is present up to 1,500 years ago. The island was densely forested. Then, however, it looks different. Fewer trees, more herbs and grass. This means that the Okhotskys plowed the forest for various purposes and created space for settlements and small fields. The story repeats itself again when the Ainu come here. The Jomon people did not grow any plants. But the Okhotskys did. Since when has there been peasant life in Japan? Immigrants from the Korean peninsula brought rice, wheat, millet, bronze and iron to the islands of Kyushu and Honshu about 2,500 years ago. From the Jomon herders, Yayoi farmers became farmers there. The new spades reached the north of Honshu, but not Hokkaido. From the north, sea hunters settled the island of Hokkaido, which was home to communities in northern Asia, on all the coasts around the Okhotsk Sea. Both migratory groups brought barley, but different types. From the north, the barley from the naked. From the south, the barley from the spade. Two different agricultural traditions. What became of the Okhotskys, wild hunters of the sea, with a preference for beer, no one knows today. It is said that from them and the old Jomon population in the south of Hokkaido, the people emerged that we as Ainu know the original inhabitants of Hokkaido. In the 15th century, there were the first reports about Ainu in Japanese chronicles. This is a musical instrument called Tonkori. It is a musical instrument that the people of Harafuto Ainu inherited. It is made as a human being. Tonkori's head, Tonkori's neck, Tonkori's shoulders, Tonkori's body, Tonkori's waist, and Tonkori's legs. This is called a Tonkori hankapu. When this is finished, a soul is inserted from this navel. I put in a glass ball. And the sound that comes out is a Tonkori talking. An old settlement center of the Ainu, Nibutani, stands on the banks of the mighty Saru River. The collection of the Ethnographic Museum is considered an important material heritage of the people's culture. The Ainu attach to the ancient craft techniques. Mrs. Kaisawa weaves fabrics for garments. I've been weaving for almost 60 years. I love weaving. I can't get enough of it. I learned how to make threads from my mother. I learned how to weave flags from my mother-in-law. The Ainu from the Ulme Ridge, which is widespread in the region, win the yarn for weaving. The inner layer is cooked until the glue dissolves, rinsed and hung on the line to dry. Mrs. Kaisawa uses onions, bay leaves and flowers to color the rind bast strips. She turns thin yarn from the strips and knots it up to a length of 7 to 8 meters. The beginnings of weaving with back strap weaving chairs probably date back 5,000 years in East Asia. Complex twine binding with multi-colored yarn is an equally old technique, and it was also known on other Pacific islands. In New Zealand, the indigenous people of Maori call the technique taniku. The Ainu shape their entire living space from plant fibers. Silk is best suited for carpets. On this simple but efficient frame, many things can be bound together. Mats, window blinds and basket bags. At the edge of the bag, the laced strings are braided together. We know such a braided edge from the openings of the Jomon ceramics. The string ceramic pot looks like a stoned string bag. The Jomon people had both. String bags and clay pots with the prints of the strings. The Ainu only have the string bags. And that is one of the most amazing phenomena. After more than 13,000 years, the inhabitants of Hokkaido stop weaving. The Ainu prefer wood, tons, cups and plates. They are masters of wood carving. The life of the Ainu follows the rhythm of the seasons. In spring, they pick the fresh juices from birch, vines and maple. In summer, they harvest roots and make them durable. They separate bark from fungi and linden to make bast strips. They cut reed grass to build houses. And they pick brown algae from boats with long rods in the sea. Fish, especially salmon, are the most important food. In autumn, they come up the rivers to their breeding grounds. Winter was the season of hunting on land. The Ainu used the poison of the plant Hakunitum, the blue iron hat, to stun deer and fur animals. The Ainu celebrated their most important religious festival at the end of December. They believed that gods come to the world of humans in different forms. The bear, as the deity of the forest and the mountains, was especially valued as a mediator between the worlds. The people had to free him from his form by killing him and eating his flesh. During the ceremony, the oldest man in the village said the farewell words and sent his spirit back to the world of gods with a good sip. The owl was honored as a protector of the villages. Museums house the caves and remains of the Ainu life. Their language and many traditions are almost extinct in the age of industrialization. All Japanese people inherited Jomon genes. But the cultural memory of the Jomon, the knowledge about plants, animals and landscapes, survived only with the Ainu. That is why the archaeologists want to preserve Jomon knowledge for future generations. But the path is rocky. We want to make the Jomon culture a world heritage. Until now, we have received five domestic recommendations. But the people of Minami-Kayabe believe in the power of their Jomon. And they feel connected to the Jomon. Not least because the sea still provides for them. Brown algae, also called kombu, are harvested today like thousands of years ago. But not only wild-growing algae, but also grown in underwater plantations. The spores of a mother plant develop into settlements on cords in the incubator and grow on long lines in the sea. Today's marine farmers order their fields in October and harvest in the next summer. On land, the algae spores are separated from the vines and roots, cleaned and hung up to dry. Dampened, pressed and cut, the algae are sent to the manufacture, where they are salted, sugared or finely chopped and processed into snacks and soups. The sea where we make kombu has been a source of nutrients for the Jomon people since the Jomon period. And this is what makes the Jomon culture unique on Hokkaido. 15,000 years ago, global warming brought the world into motion. The ice caps melted, the sea level rose and Hokkaido became an island. But its inhabitants did not go under. The people made the wealth of the sea their livelihood. And it has remained so to this day. The Jomon were among the first potters and were the only ones who consistently continued this tradition for more than 13,000 years. The peoples that came after them enriched the old Jomon world with new aspects. Berry ritual and tonkori, barley and rice cultivation. One thing, however, remained unchanged. They all cultivated the natural resources that Hokkaido's landscapes offered them. Plants were grown and grown, but this only supplemented the food supply. Jomon are part of, early on and the basis of the Hokkaido universe that the islanders continued to develop. New times bring new challenges and possibilities. Today, Hokkaido still enjoys a good reputation for its marine products all over Japan. But also for its potatoes, melons and lavender, dairy products, whiskey and beer. This is the map of Hokkaido as a whole. This red point is the ruins of Hokkaido. There are about 12,000 places. From the Paleolithic Period, these are the ruins of Ainu culture. About 12,000 archaeological sites have been registered, but only a hundred of them have been thoroughly explored. How many old traces are still undiscovered? How many secrets of the Hokkaido universe are still unravelled? Will archaeologists, climate researchers, botanists and ethnologists be able to work together with the islanders to discover the connections and preserve the knowledge for the world and the next generations? There is hope. And also the will.