Stonehenge exhibition highlights similarities between ancient British and Japanese cultures

This Jōmon cooking pot was built at around the same time as Stonehenge. This is the first time the pot has gone on display outside Japan. Photograph: Sam Frost/Sam Frost/English Heritage

The treasures on display range from the spectacular – a cooking pot made 5,000 years ago decorated with a ceramic representation of dancing flames – to the intriguing, such as lovingly crafted models of mushrooms that might suggest the ancient makers were interested in the mind-altering properties of fungi.

Gathered in an exhibition room at Stonehenge, around 80 objects made in Japan during the Jōmon period, roughly the same time the great stone circle on Salisbury Plain was built, highlight some beguiling parallels between two cultures separated by thousands of miles.