Asian ancestry was suggested to be related to the Neolithic West Liao River farmers in northeast China". The finding indicated that the "West Liao River-related farmers might have spread the proto-Korean language as their ancestry was found to be predominant in extant Koreans" and these "Proto-Korean groups, in turn, introduced West Liao River-like ancestry into the gene pool of present-day Japan". These people are thought to have caused the displacement of the indigenous Jōmon people causing a significant diminishment of Jōmon genomes in the regions. It was deduced that this event (and the populations remaining genetically homogeneous since then) was what caused modern Koreans and Japanese to share the majority of their genetic makeup as the latter group "can be represented as a mixture of Koreans (91%) with a limited genetic heritage from a basal East Asian lineage related to Jōmon (9%)". Controversies regarding the Ryukyuan people Major disagreements exists as to whether the Ryukyuans are considered the same as the Yamato, or identified as an independent but related ethnic group, or as a sub-group that constitutes Japanese ethnicity together with the Yamato. Ryukyuans have a distinct culture from the Yamato, with its own native cuisine, history, language, religion and traditions. From the Meiji period onward, by which the Ryukyuan's kingdom was annexed by Japan, Japanese scholars such as Shinobu Orikuchi and Kunio Yanagita supported the later discredited ideological viewpoint that they were a sub-group of the Yamato people. The Ryukyuans were forcibly assimilated into Japanese (Yamato) people with their ethnic identity suppressed by the Meiji government, and suppressed Ryukyuan ethnic identity, tradition, culture and language. Many modern day Japanese people today that colonized the Ryukyu Islands are a mixture of both Yamato and Ryukyuan. See also Emperor of Japan Ethnic groups of Japan Japanese battleship Yamato Japanese nationalism Nihonjinron Race and ethnicity in Japan Yama-bito Yamato (disambiguation) Yamato period Yamato nadeshiko Yamato-damashii—"the Japanese spirit" References Demographics of Japan Ethnic groups in Japan