Asian hunter gatherers. Higashimyo Jōmon study A study in 2021 by Adachi et al. analyzed a Jōmon sample (~5,000 BC) from the Higashimyo cave near Saga on the island of Kyushu, which adds further evidence to the regional differences among the Jōmon period populations. The Higashimyo Jōmon sample was found to be genetically relative closest to other Jōmon samples and to various East Asian groups, such as Taiwanese indigenous peoples (Ami and Atayal), Kankanaey and Ilocano of northern Philippines, as well as Koreans and Japanese people. However, since only 6.9% of the nuclear genome was readable in the Higashimyo individual, no reliable conclusion could be made. According to the authors, the main ancestry component of the Jōmon period population of Japan shares ancestry with contemporary East Asians but split about 22,000 years ago, close to the split between East Asians and ancestral Native Americans. However, non-East Asian geneflow into the Jōmon period population resulted in their unique position and internal diversity, which got strengthened by later isolation, migration, and genetic drift. Unlike Hokkaido Jomon samples, the Higashimyo individual belonged to mitochondrial DNA haplogroup M7a1, rather than N9b. Like previous studies, a distinction between Northern and Southern Jōmon was detected, with the Southern Jōmon (represented by the Higashimyo sample) likely being the source of Jōmon ancestry among modern Japanese, rather than Northern Jōmon. The authors note that more studies are needed to better understand the internal diversity of the Jōmon people and their historical formation. Reevaluation of the genetic position of the Jōmon lineage in 2021 A study in 2021 by Cooke et al., reevaluated the phylogenetic relationship of various Jōmon samples with other populations, and estimated that the Jōmon lineage split from modern East Asians between 15,000BC and 20,000BC, but after the divergence of Ancestral Native Americans in ~25,000BC. The authors than analyzed whether the Jōmon population had any contact with other continental Upper Paleolithic people after the divergence of their lineage, but before they became isolated in the Japanese archipelago. The inferred Jōmon ancestry among modern Japanese people is estimated at a mean average of 9.31%. Descendants Recent studies note that the Jōmon people consisted of several ethnic groups that arrived in Japan at different times and later converged into the pre-Yayoi population of Japan. However, the studies used to theorise the modern-day descendents of the originally-mixed ethnic group used modelled ancestry by comparing various Jōmon period samples with