A few days ago, a DNA study by medical researchers solved the mystery of the origin of the Japanese. After testing, the ancestors of the Japanese were actually related to two Chinese provinces.
In fact, regarding the origin of the Japanese, there have always been rumors that Xu Fu, a fangshi of the Qin Dynasty, is their ancestor. In Japan, there are many statues of Xu Fu, and the Japanese royal family also respects Xu Fu, and some places hold Xu Fu's sacrifice every year.
However, there are also those who believe that the ancestors of the Japanese are descendants of the Yayoi and Jomon people.
So, where did the ancestors of the Japanese come from? Is it really related to Xu Fu?
First, the legend of Xu Fu Dongdu
When it comes to Xu Fu, it has to start with Qin Shi Huang. Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms and was the first emperor in the history of the mainland to truly realize the unification of the country, creating great achievements.
But people will always get old, and slowly Qin Shihuang feels more and more powerless. Although the country has achieved great unification, the burden on him has become more and more heavy.
At this time, someone said to the emperor, saying that there is a "elixir" in the world, which can make people immortal and rejuvenate. After years of hard work, this "panacea" has never been found.
Finally, Qin Shi Huang issued a notice to find from all over the country or able to refine the "elixir of immortality". In this way, miscellaneous characters from all over the world gathered in the capital Xianyang.
One of them was Xu Fu, who came from Langya County, Qidi, today's Lianyungang, Jiangsu.
This person was a very famous Fangshi at that time, and legend has it that he was also a closed disciple of Oniyako. With his master-apprentice relationship with Ghost Guzi, Xu Fu won the trust of the First Emperor.
But no matter how hard Xu Fu and the others tried, the elixir refined could not meet the requirements of the First Emperor (of course, from today's point of view, such a thing did not exist in the first place).
Because Xu Fu had failed again and again, he knew that the emperor was the master who killed without blinking. So he gave birth to a plan and told the emperor that there was no "elixir" of immortality in Daqin.
But Penglai Immortal Mountain in the sea, where immortals lived, where there was the elixir that the emperor wanted. However, it takes 3,000 boys and girls to show their respect for the gods to obtain the elixir.
For the First Emperor, who was eager to seek Dan, all conditions were not a problem, and they all agreed. In this way, Xu Fu was able to get out smoothly. A group of people traveled to a place that historians call "Plain Hirosawa", which is actually a place name in Japan.
Xu Fu saw that this place was good, so he settled down and never returned to Daqin.
Second, the legend of Xu Fu living in Japan
Although there are relatively few records of Xu Fu in China, it is more detailed in Japan. There is a book in Japan called "Xu Fu Ancient Questioning Field", which records Xu Fu's family history in more detail, and more importantly, this book of more than 200,000 words is written in Chinese.
From the time calculation, the time when Xu Fu arrived in Japan was probably Japan's "Warring States Period". At this time, Japan was very backward, and Xu Fu brought advanced agriculture, medicine, rice cultivation, astronomy and geography, metallurgy, weaving, construction and other technologies to Japan.
Until today, many temples in Japan were built specifically for Xu Fu, calling him a divine doctor, the father of agriculture, the father of architecture, etc., it is not difficult to see that Xu Fu's social status in Japan is very high.
Third, DNA reveals the truth to people
However, with the development of science and technology, human beings can solve some difficult historical problems left over from ancient times and even ancient times through scientific and technological means.
With the help of DNA technology in the field of biotechnology, scientists finally discovered that Xu Fu was not the ancestor of the Japanese. The biological ancestors of the Japanese are the Jomon and Yayoi people.
Of course, Japan is not a single-ethnic country, and some Japanese scholars believe that Xu Fu is a very small branch of Japanese ancestors.
4. The ancestors of the Japanese - the Jomon people
The Jomon people are considered to be one of the first ethnic groups to live in Japan. Between 38,000 and 18,000 years, the ancestors of the Jomon people entered Japan from the Asian continent and are now mainly found in the islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, and the Ryukyu Islands.
Biological scientists have done a lot of experiments to study the genes of the Jomon people.
The researchers extracted the Y chromosome gene from thousands of Japanese. It was then compared to the Y chromosome of men in other Asian countries.
It turned out that the Japanese have a very special set of genes that are very different from other races, and this set of genes should be inherited from the Jomon people.
The reason is that the Jomon people lived in ancient Japan in a very closed environment, and over thousands of years, they evolved a unique combination of genes.
According to the existing artifacts in Japan, the ancient Jomon people lived on isolated islands. The land area is very limited, so I have not mastered agricultural technology, and the living environment is very difficult, which means that the special DNA combination of the Japanese is generated in this environment in order to adapt to the environment.
5. The ancestors of the Japanese - the Yayoi people
In the Tokyo Museum in Japan, there is a pottery called Yayoicho on display. Scientists deduced the "Yayoi culture" from this pottery, which revolutionized ancient Japanese society.
Since then, Japan has pottery, porcelain, bronze, iron, etc., and at the same time, a series of new technologies such as agriculture, medicine, textiles, and architecture have begun to emerge. In other words, the arrival of the Yayoi people injected vitality and vitality into the ancient and closed Japan.
In addition, scientists have studied 25 ancient human skeletons unearthed on the Sea of Japan near the Korean Peninsula. The results showed that the skeletons lived at least 2100 years ago. Scientists compared their genes with those of other races, and the results showed that they were very similar to today's Japanese and Koreans.
Some scientists speculate that the Yayoi people probably entered Japan from northern China or northern Asia through the Korean Peninsula. The oldest Yayoi may be Chinese, Korean, or other Asian people.
But they entered Japan later than the Jomon people, about 3000 BC to 1500 BC, because they were first discovered in the town of Yayoi in Tokyo, so they were called "Yayoi".
In short, the ancestors of the Japanese were not Xufu, but Jomon and Yayoi. However, according to the available evidence, it may be that some Japanese people came from China.
In modern times, most Japanese people are descendants of Yayoi. It is speculated that after the Yayoi people entered Japan, there may have been a war with the local Jomon people, and the Jomon people gradually declined, and the two merged into the Yamato nation.