A beautiful and thorough piece about Jomon pottery. I live in Niigata, Japan, where there is so much Jomon pottery that excavations must be done before new roads can be built. It was interesting for me to read about the pottery and the culture behind it written from the perspective of someone from overseas. The comparisons with the culture that produced the Stone Henge were also enlightening. Even today, 10,000 year-old Jomon values of living in harmony with nature as a steward to the environment around you, and living also in harmony with each other are still evident in Japanese culture, despite imported concepts first from China and then from America which put things like order and profit and progress over harmony.