The Zuni Enigma: A Native American People's Possible Japanese Connection - Softcover

Davis, Nancy Yaw

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393322300 ISBN 13: 9780393322309

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

Synopsis

"A stunning and carefully supported argument that should stir useful discussion.... [An] exciting, groundbreaking work."―Booklist

Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe? For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan. In a book with groundbreaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest―searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism―across the Pacific to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago. 72 black and white illustrations and 17 maps

About this title

About the Author:

Nancy Yaw Davis holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Washington. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

From Publishers Weekly:

The peaceful Zuni of New Mexico and Arizona are much studied, partly because their language, culture and physical appearance set them apart from other Native American peoples. Davis, an anthropologist who has made 10 visits to the Zuni pueblo, now offers the startling thesis that a group of Japanese Buddhists left earthquake-wracked medieval Japan and came by ship to the Southern California coast, eventually migrating inland to the Zuni territory, where they merged their culture and genes with Native Americans to produce the modern Zuni people around A.D. 1350. Davis uses "forensic" evidence--including analyses of dental morphology, blood and skeletal remains--to support a Japanese-Zuni connection. Further, she notes the Zuni's exceptionally high incidence of a specific kidney disease that is also unusually common in Japan. Yet she acknowledges there have been no DNA studies to confirm or refute her hypothesis, and she has not turned up a single 13th-century Japanese item in North America. Her bold, highly speculative theory gets a boost from some cultural parallels, including striking similarities between the Zuni and Japanese languages; between the Zuni "sacred rosette" found on robes and pottery and the Japanese Buddhist chrysanthemum symbol (presently Japan's imperial crest). A Zuni mid-January ceremony with masked monsters, aimed at frightening children into proper behavior, is almost identical to one in Japan. Davis's broader thesis that the Pacific was a "liquid highway" mounts a serious challenge to the entrenched idea of the peopling of the Americas solely via the Bering Strait land bridge. Open-minded readers will enjoy her beautifully written book as an opportunity to ponder our shared humanity. Illus.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0393322300
• ISBN 13: 9780393322309
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350