There's a lot of similarity in the points here and in the US which I've found. There's only so many ways you can shape a pointy rock to kill a critter. The points here don't have any of the side notches at the bottom like you see often in the US. There are a lot of narrow triangle shapes with the bottoms flat or curved. Many points also have small "tails" coming down from the triangle shape. One interesting note: in the high desert playas of Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho where there used to be inland lakes, I've found several unique arrow points with rounded bottoms and having a definite upward curve. These were shaped so that an archer could kneel down at the edge of the lake and shoot an arrow that would skip over the water to hit into rafts of birds a short distance offshore. I've found six so far here in Japan that are EXACT duplicates of ones I found in the US. AND, museum curators here give the same explanation as to their use. I never imagined I'd get to do artifact collecting when I came here 17+ years ago. Anthropology/archaeology was my university. major with an emphasis in the Pac. NW Indians. I've become friends with a local curator and have been able to join in on several digs with Japanese archaeologists. It's been basically getting a free graduate course in Japanese Jomon stone age life. 

    About an hour's drive from my home is the famous site at Aomori called Sannai Maruyama. There are several good English accounts which any major search engine will take you to. I've gotten to join Japanese there a few times to help. The site has pushed Japanese archaeology knowledge way forward. Enamel ware has been dated there a thousand years earlier than in China. The prevalent thought was that enamel ware came across to Japan from China. Now there seems to be strong evidence that it originated in Aomori and was taken across to China. 

    In a nearby site, DNA testing has identified that the bones of horses found date back 10,000 to 12,000 years ago to the first levels of occupancy. That corresponds to the migrations originating in Siberia and crossing over to Alaska and down the Sakalin and Kamchatka bridges to Japan. AND that the bones' DNA is a match with Prezwalsky's (sp) horse. There's a lot of exciting new information coming along frequently. Then you get the recent DNA match which links Navaho to Ainu. When I first came here, the accepted theory was that Japanese were a unique and different group separate from Korea or China whose unbroken ancestry went back 10 to 20,000 years via the Jomon culture. Some sites were listed in this northern area as Jomon, and some were listed as Ainu which were supposed to be separate. I could never get an adequate answer as to HOW could two different stone age cultures exist side by side for over 10,000 years as separate and uniquely different. DNA shows they ALL were Jomon/Ainu - one and the same. The "Japanese" race as it exists today came in waves about 2,500 to 1,500 years ago mainly as peoples pushed out of Korea and China due to famines, wars, etc. They brought with them the iron and bronze culture which took over from the Jomon.

    In many ways the history of Japan with mainland invasions/settlements is quite identical to the Americas with European invasions/settlements replacing native Indian populations. I saw an interesting program series on NHK TV about early history. In southern Japan they found about 3 dozen burials with the bodies sitting upright and the faces all aimed in the same identical western direction. The bones dated to about 1,500 years ago as I remember. DNA traced the bones' origin to a small area in China. When a line was drawn from the location of the site in Japan to China along the line of sight of the skulls, the line fell exactly on the Chinese origin site. They were probably a group which stayed together en route to Japan, settled in the same area, and were buried with the nostalgic "look backward" to "home". I find archaeology fascinating!!

Herb Bastuscheck