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This chapter discusses the trade of the Ryukyu maritime entrepō. Two classes of goods were traded: those of local origin and those that were transshipped or relayed. In addition, some trading ships secured fresh water and local provisions from ports. Products from the Ryukyu Islands included sulfur, native horses, mother-of-pearl, textiles, and red dye from the akagi tree (Bischoffia javanica); transshipped goods included Japanese swords, fans, silver, Chinese ceramics of all kinds, food and wine in containers, textiles, coinage, and iron goods. The trade artifacts surviving in archaeological sites usually consist of ceramics and metal objects such as iron tools. The ceramics include various kinds of serving vessels, such as plates, bowls, and cups, as well as vessels for processing food such as ceramic grating bowls (suribachi).

This chapter discusses the importance of colonial Taiwan's model of malaria control in Japanese colonial medicine and examines the process of malaria eradication in Yaeyama of the Ryukyu Islands in the twentieth century. It evaluates the historical significance of Yaeyama's case in the context of the history of malaria in East Asia and the world. It explains that Yaeyama's experience is important because it reflected changes in approaches to malaria eradication in the twentieth century: from a model developed in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule to a U.S. model supported by the World Health Organization (WHO). It also highlights the contributions made by Japanese researchers and research institutes to the development of colonial medicine and their role in anti-malaria efforts in Yaeyama, Taiwan, and other Japanese colonial possessions.

This chapter describes the cultural and social changes in the Ryukyu Islands during the Gusuku Period. The period marked a fundamental change in the life of the Ryukyu islanders, a transformation from hunting and gathering to cultivation and to small states within a span of a few centuries. Ironworking, which had been introduced into the Amami Islands around AD 500 (Kamimura 1999), became widespread throughout the Ryukyus. In addition, a new magnitude of extensive trade links connected the island communities to the surrounding regions of East Asia. More than a millennium of prior experience in the trade of various tropical marine shells to Japan as far north as Hokkaido, and to China and Korea, allowed the people of the Ryukyus to use the knowledge, capital, and economic expertise that flowed into the islands to achieve new forms of political and social organization.

This introductory chapter presents the archaeological studies on the prehistory and early history of the Ryukyu Islands. In the Holocene Period, colonizing populations from divergent directions inhabited the northern and central Ryukyus from about 9,000 years ago, and the southern Ryukyus from about 4,500 years ago. Whereas the southern islands remained in comparative isolation until the eleventh century AD, the northern and central islanders were in almost continuous contact with the Japanese main islands. With the sweeping changes of the East Asian Mediaeval Period beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries AD, the islanders were affected by changes in Japan and China, particularly the development of navigation and commerce in the Chinese Song dynasty (AD 960 to 1279).

This chapter provides the geographical description of the Ryukyu Islands. The islands form a chain, 1,100 km long, which are composed of the Ryukyu Trench, the main island arc of sea mounts, an inner line of volcanoes, the Okinawa Trough, and the continental shelf. The line of volcanoes extends between the western side of the Ryukyu Islands and the Okinawa Trough, and can be seen in the Tokara Islands and Iō Torishima. Some special features of the islands have played important roles in the development of living patterns in the region. These features are the unique combination of inland broadleaf evergreen forest with Indo-Pacific strand flora and coral reefs, the East Asian monsoon, the Kuroshio (Black Current), and seasonal typhoons.

This chapter describes the earliest archaeological findings of human groups—the Pleistocene fossils—from the Ryukyu Islands. These fossils range in date from 32,000 to 16,000 years ago. From 23,000 to 18,000 BP, at the height of the Wurm Glaciation, sea level was lower by about 140 m; consequently, a large land mass was available for habitation by people whose remains were found in Minatogawa and other sites. Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens had to cross water to reach the few large islands of the Ryukyus in the Late Pleistocene. Between the Late Pleistocene discoveries and subsequent Holocene archaeological sites there is a gap of about 8,000 to 9,000 years.