S38-6

No Obvious Human Related Environmental Change During the Prehistory of Amami and Okinawa Archipelagos, Japan

Takamiya Hiroto1, Toizumi Takeji2, Kurozumi Taiji3

1Kagoshima University, Japan

2Meiji University, Japan

3Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, Japan

Most islands in the world were colonized by Homo sapiens after ca. 10,000 years ago. In many cases, archaeologists have found environmental disturbance or deterioration after successful colonization by Homo sapiens. For example, the well-known moa and related species became extinct after human colonization in New Zealand. Also, many environmental perturbations such as deforestation and erosion have been reported from most islands where archaeological research has been conducted. It appears to be an agreed concept among island archaeologists that humans easily impact delicate ecosystems once they successfully occupied islands. The islands of Amami and Okinawa, Japan, were first colonized by Homo sapiens, at least by 36000 years ago. While Palaeolithic (ca. 36000-10000 years ago) studies on the islands have a long history, we do not have much information about how humans impacted the island environment. At the same time, the continuity from Palaeolithic people to the following Shell midden period (ca. 7000-1000 years ago), has not been resolved yet. What many scholars agree upon is that Homo sapiens successfully occupied the Amami and Okinawa archipelagos during the Shell midden period. For the last three decades, faunal analysts and archaeobotanists and researchers from related fields have attempted reconstruct Shell midden environments, especially focusing on when people began to impact the island ecosystem. The result is that we have not been able to identify clear human induced environmental change during the Shell midden period. It appears that the Shell midden people lived “harmoniously” with the island environment, or their impact was minimal during this period.