The Jōmon People of Ancient Japan: A Blueprint for Hope
When considering an ancient civilization, especially one that has been largely unexplored, it is easy to form ideas based on unexamined assumptions. The phrase ‘Lost Civilization’ probably brings to mind megaliths buried in a desert or hidden beneath ocean waves. This is the vivid image conjured by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his classic poem, Ozymandias:
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said— “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
