The trove keeper led them along a path that looped to the left, stopping when he reached a large oval hole in the ground. It measured about six feet deep with several circular depressions, deeper than the tamped base of the pit itself. These holes were spaced around the edge of the pit except for two positioned near the center. The trio clustered around the spot, anticipating an explanation.
“The Jomon dug these pits for their homes,” Ken said. “They drove a central pillar into the middle of the pit with support posts along the sides. The shell would have been constructed of chestnut boughs. Like those.”
He pointed back to a structure on the right side of the path which they’d passed earlier. Everyone turned to study a latticework of weathered tree limbs covering another pit.
“Over there you see the finished product.” Ken gestured beyond their current location to a grass hut farther up the path. “They used kaya grass for thatching.”
The reconstructed Jomon hut possessed a door opening that jutted out a few feet from the building like a porch. The roof rose to a narrow peak with a vent over the front entry to allow smoke from the central hearth to escape.
“This seems rather elaborate for a gatherer-hunter society,” Griffin remarked.
“The Jomon put some time into constructing their dwellings because they were sedentary,” Ken said. “This site was occupied continuously for a thousand years. It originally included about one hundred homes. Unlike most gatherer-hunters, the Jomon didn’t need to migrate to find food. Chestnuts and other local plants were a staple part of their diet. They fished and harvested crustaceans. Whale and seal bones have been found here which means they also hunted sea mammals. A readily-available food supply gave them time to build permanent settlements and create their wonderful crafts—pottery, jewelry, votive figurines.”
“I don’t quite understand why this particular culture caught the attention of the Arkana.” Daniel eyed the Jomon dwellings dubiously.
Ken grinned with amusement. “Because the Jomon offer archaeological proof of Japan’s matristic past, that’s why. Their culture thrived for sixteen thousand years. If you factor in their antecedents in Siberia, it makes patriarchy’s timeline seem like a blip on the radar.”
The scion furrowed his brow. “I know what ‘matristic’ means but I don’t see anything here that proves the Jomon were a female-centered society.”
“Most of the hard evidence has been carted off to museums,” Ken conceded. “I could take you to the exhibits but how about I just give you the highlights?”
“That would be helpful,” Daniel said.
Cassie nudged Griffin in the ribs. She leaned up to whisper, “Remember when I was the new kid on the block and asked all the questions?”
“I always found your naiveté endearing,” he confided back.
“Aww, that’s sweet,” she murmured. “But everybody else found it annoying.”
They both transferred their attention back to Ken who’d already begun a discourse on the finer points of Jomon culture. “We can infer a lot from the way these people lived. For example, we know the Jomon were a classless society because all their housing was of a uniform design. There were no elaborate palaces. Every home looked exactly the same, and they were intended for large kin groups, not nuclear families.”
“Like a Haudenosaunee longhouse,” the pythia noted.
“Exactly,” Ken agreed. “Jomon houses were also clustered in settlements that offered no defensive advantage in case of attack. This hilltop is a perfect example.”
He gave his listeners a few moments to scan their surroundings.
“It was chosen because of proximity to the food supply. In all the Jomon villages across Japan, we’ve never found fortifications of any kind.”
“The Minoans weren’t defensive either,” Cassie remarked. “They settled in places that had spiritual significance. The threat of attack never factored into it.”
“Also true.” Ken went on. “The Jomon possessed the technology to build weapons, but they chose not to. All we’ve found are hunting implements. They made jewelry for personal adornment, not as a tribute to a ruler. We also know they were probably goddess-worshippers.”
The scion’s eyebrows shot up.
“It’s in the clay,” Ken informed him. “Aside from some intricate pottery, the Jomon spent a lot of time fashioning votive figurines known as dogon. About ten thousand of these dogon have been recovered so far. That’s a huge number given the small geographical area of their territory. The overwhelming majority of those figurines have been identified as female. Maybe one percent of the dogon are male.” The trove keeper peered at Daniel. “Does it seem likely that they would have wasted all that energy creating female figurines that held no symbolic significance?”
“In the literature I’ve read about ancient Europe, such statues are dismissed as fertility symbols,” Daniel countered.
“Dismissed,” Griffin echoed sardonically. “It would be quite typical for an overlord archaeologist to dismiss fertility as an unimportant concept. And he would be utterly wrong to do so. Jomon survival depended on fertility. Not simply as it related to the offspring of the clan, but the fertility of the seals and whales they hunted, of the crustaceans and fish they gathered, of the plants whose seeds and fruits they collected. Their lives depended on the continued abundance of nature. It was inevitable that they would invoke a goddess who embodied the concept of fertility. Of course, such a divinity would have seemed insignificant to overlords. They exploited others to meet their survival needs and, consequently, equated sustenance with pillage.”
The scrivener smiled humorlessly. “Overlords exchanged the fertility goddess of a Garden of Eden for a warlord god of perpetual bloodshed. They prayed only for new people to conquer: ‘O Lord, grant me the power to smite all who oppose me and take what is theirs.’”
The scion flinched. He lowered his eyes, a flush suffusing his cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Cassie asked.
“I was just thinking about my father,” Daniel confessed. “Lately, all he prays for is victory over his enemies. Nothing else matters to him anymore.” He lapsed into a gloomy silence.
Ken hastily changed the subject. “Whether you believe the
