Uncontacted contemporaries · 661 overlapping years

Phoenician City-States Jomon Culture

For 661 years — from 1,200 BCE to 539 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

Phoenician City-States

1,200 BCE–539 BCE

Jomon Culture

14,000 BCE–300 BCE

↑ Overlap begins, 1,200 BCE

Phoenician City-States

Levantine coast

A network of maritime trading city-states whose alphabet became the ancestor of Greek, Latin, and most Western scripts.

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 Seafaring

Phoenician City-States only

Bronze metallurgy
Iron metallurgy
Astronomical record-keeping
Urban planning

Jomon Culture only

No traits unique to Jomon Culture in this comparison.