My “Jane Jacobs” link was to Overcoming Bias, where it was suggested (by someone other than Jacobs) that sedentary communities preceded agriculture by up to 3000 years, which I suppose would fit your “couple millenia).
Your Jomon link said that their pottery is evidence of sedentary living and described its origin as Mesolithic, or “Middle Stone Age” and preceding the Neolithic of agriculture. It also said they were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. It describes them as having “some of the highest densities known for foraging populations”, though noting that Pacific Americans were similarly high.
When humans left Africa they seem to have hugged the southeast coastline. We can expect that they had boats since they were able to reach Australia and the polynesian islands. So I think fishing was pretty important. Cavalli-Sforza writes of pre-Jomon Japan “A major source of food in those pre-agricultural times came from fishing, then as now, and this would have limited for ecological reasons the area of expansion to the coastline”.
My “Jane Jacobs” link was to Overcoming Bias, where it was suggested (by someone other than Jacobs) that sedentary communities preceded agriculture by up to 3000 years, which I suppose would fit your “couple millenia).
Your Jomon link said that their pottery is evidence of sedentary living and described its origin as Mesolithic, or “Middle Stone Age” and preceding the Neolithic of agriculture. It also said they were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. It describes them as having “some of the highest densities known for foraging populations”, though noting that Pacific Americans were similarly high.
When humans left Africa they seem to have hugged the southeast coastline. We can expect that they had boats since they were able to reach Australia and the polynesian islands. So I think fishing was pretty important. Cavalli-Sforza writes of pre-Jomon Japan “A major source of food in those pre-agricultural times came from fishing, then as now, and this would have limited for ecological reasons the area of expansion to the coastline”.