Welcome to Chronicles of Japan’s first full episode: Prehistoric Japan. In this episode we discuss the geography of Japan, the stage upon which our story will be set, and then look at the first people to arrive during the Paleolithic era. We’ll discuss Japan during most of the Pleistocene, as well as take a look at some of the few skeletal remains and what the evidence tells us about life in the islands thousands of years ago.

We’ve include a map for anyone who wants to follow along with our story.

Updated to a static map, showing Hokkaido in the upper left, and then, southwest of that, we get Honshu, the smaller island of Shikoku, and then Kyushu.