Uncontacted contemporaries · 1,400 overlapping years

Kingdom of Ebla Jomon Culture

For 1,400 years — from 3,000 BCE to 1,600 BCE — both civilizations existed simultaneously. Neither this dataset nor the historical record shows any documented trade, war, or diplomatic contact between them.

14,000 BCE 300 BCE

Kingdom of Ebla

3,000 BCE–1,600 BCE

Jomon Culture

14,000 BCE–300 BCE

↑ Overlap begins, 3,000 BCE

Kingdom of Ebla

Northern Syria

Known almost entirely from a vast clay-tablet archive that survived its city's destruction, revealing a sophisticated Bronze Age bureaucracy.

Jomon Culture

Japanese archipelago

A remarkably long-lived hunter-gatherer culture in Japan, notable for producing some of the world's earliest pottery long before agriculture took hold.

Traits both developed independently

With no documented contact, any shared trait below represents independent development rather than transmission from one to the other.

Long-distance trade

Kingdom of Ebla only

Monumental architecture
Bronze metallurgy
Irrigation agriculture
Standing army
Urban planning

Jomon Culture only

Seafaring