Prehistoric HBV in the Japanese Archipelago

FUKASAWA Makusu*, KANZAWA-KIRIYAMA Hideaki, KAWAI Yosuke, TANAKA Tomohisa, MORIISHI Kohji, OKUDA Shujiro, and ADACHI Noboru

The Jomon people are mysterious hunter-gatherers who prospered in the Japanese archipelago during the long 10,000-odd years but then disappeared only to remain faint genetic trace in modern-day Japanese. Since much remains enigmatic about the dispersal of early sapiens across East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania during the Late Pleistocene, the homeland of the Jomon people has been unknown, tentatively assumed to be Southeast Asia. The Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) of Jomon people was similar to that found in gibbons and orangutans in Southeast Asia, and a virus recombined with a genotype specific to Australian Aborigines. The results of the virus analysis suggest the possibility of interbreeding, interaction, or sharing of ancestral groups between human populations.