Professor Hiroki Obata of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kumamoto University found an estimated 500 Kokuzoumushi kneaded into a deep pot-shaped pottery from the Tatesaki site in Fukushima Town, Hokkaido, in the late Jomon period.Professor Obata suspects that he kneaded the chestnuts cultivated by the Jomon people in hopes of a good harvest.
According to Kumamoto University, the maize weevil is a beetle of the ground beetle family and is now known as a pest of stored rice.Professor Obata took a CT scan of the pottery excavated at the Tatezaki site in February 2016, and found that 2 adult maize weevil were kneaded into it.Some of the pottery was missing, and it seems that an estimated 417 pieces were kneaded in as a whole.
The maize weevil that had been kneaded was about 2% longer than the one from western Japan.In western Japan during the Jomon period, nuts of the genus Quercus serrata called acorns were mainly stored, whereas in eastern Japan including Hokkaido, chestnuts were the main, and it is thought that the high nutrients of chestnuts made the maize weevil larger.
Chestnut is a plant that does not grow naturally in Hokkaido, but it is said that people in the cylindrical pottery culture area, such as the Sannai Maruyama Site in Aomori Prefecture, have carried it out of Honshu and cultivated it in Hokkaido.Professor Obata thinks that there is a possibility that the Jomon people in Aomori Prefecture crossed the strait by boat and carried the chestnut fruits to Hokkaido together with the maize weevil.
Paper information:[Journal of Archaeological Science] 2018 Discovery of the Jomon era maize weevils in Hokkaido, Japan and its mean
