The Jōmon period (縄文時代, Jōmon jidai^?) is the time in Japanese prehistory from about 14,000 BC to 300 BC.

The term jōmon means "cord-patterned" in Japanese. This refers to the pottery style characteristic of the Jōmon culture, and which has markings made using sticks with cords wrapped around them. This period was rich in tools, jewelry, figures and pottery. Recent Y-DNA haplotype testing^[when?] has led to the popularly accepted (though untested) hypothesis that haplogroup D2 Y-DNA, which has been found in some percentages of samples of modern Japanese, Ryukyuan, and Ainu males, may reflect patrilineal descent from members of a Jōmon period culture of the Japanese Archipelago. A study based from the Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Jomon skeletons from the Funadomari show the fact that haplogroups N9b and M7a were observed in Hokkaido Jomons bore out the hypothesis that these haplogroups are the (pre-) Jomon contribution to the modern Japanese mtDNA pool, In the study of " Mitochondrial Genome Variation in Eastern Asia and the Peopling of Japan " shows the combined frequency of M7a and N9b in Mainland Japanese average at 9.5%, in Okinawan at 14%, and in the Ainu at 17.7%