Evening star., 1942-07-14
Of Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science PROGRESS
In Laboratory, Field
And Study
BIZ Thomas r. Henri.

6y IHOUuS N. HeWy.
Anthropological searchlights now are
focused on Northern Japan, where-long
submerged and persecuted-dwell rem
nants of lost white race
In their villages one finds hairy, large
headed men with bearded, intelligent
faces, many of which are strikingly sim
liar to those of Leo Tolstoy or Alfred
Tennyson, and women who, dressed in
modern attire would attract little at
tention on the streets of an American
city.
These people-the Ainus-constitute
one of the most fascinating and difficult
problems of racial origins now confront
ing anthropology, say ethnologists of
the Smithsonian Institution.
Where did they come from? They
occupied the islands long before the
arrival of the ancestors of the present
Japanese. They are decidedly Cauca-
sian in their appearance and in some
of their folk-ways. Their language,
never true criterion of origin, is
monoSyllabic one with certain super
f1cial resemblance to the Chinese, but
ciple. One of the best of the studies
of these people was recently reported
to the Soviet Academy of Sciences by
the Russian anthropologist, L. Stenberg.
The conclusion seems inevitable that
the Anus are not Caucasians, in the
strlctest sense of the word, but that
they belong to a general Caucasoid COM
ch
Southern Asia and Indonesia. Perhaps
they have some vague relationship with
the aborigines of Australia, who also
have strikingly Caucasian faces, al
though they are black.
Their hairy bodies alone, Prof STEM
berg points out, is probably sufficient to
cut them off from the general Mongoloid
racial complex in which they were sub
merged. However widely variant the
far-f1ung elements of the yellow race
from the Southern Chinaman to the
American Indian, they are alike in the
racial character of scanty hair on the
face and body. This hirsuteness always
was stressed by the japanese as evidence
of the almost subhuman status of the
Anus.
Practically nothing, he explains indi-
Gates common origin of these people
and the races of Northern Siberia,
closely akin physically and in many of
their habits to the American Indians
There has been some racial crossing. but
even here the results have been SUPER
fetal.
Even superficial examination of the
Ainu material culture, he says, ind-
Gates that they must have come from
the South. For example, their common
dress in summer is the loin CLOTH This
was unknown among Northern peoples.
Their winter dress is similar to that of
their Northern neighbors, the Gilyaks,
but they use Gilyak words for all such
articles of clothing. For the loin cloth
they use their own term, indicating that
they brought it with them. This is a
common attire of the Southern islanders.
For winter transportation they use
sledges and skis which are almost
Identical with those of their Northern
eighbors-obviously copies In summer
they use dugout canoes which are known
in the North. They have had since time
immemorial distinct type of loom and
style of weaving. Weaving was unknown
to the Siberians before they came under
white influence.
All IN ALL says DR.. Stenberg, "the path
of Ainu migration must be looked for
IN the same direction in which is found
the way of all migrations of the south
western parts of the Pacific The Ainu
must have peopled the japanese archi-
pelago in the same way in which were
peopled the Philippine Islands, Formosa
the Moluccas and the whole of Oceania.
1T is remarkable that even the Ian
guage has preserved traces of their in
sular life. 1t has only one word to
designate country-1and swimming on
the surface of water. According to the
Alnu the world is an immense ocean
in the middle of which are islands The
neighboring Gilyaks have two different
words for island and land.
But very long period of time must
have passed and a great distance must
have been travelled before the Anus
came to their present habitation. Dur
ing this long migration they must have
acquired many different traits from
different peoples and cultures with whom
they came in contact until they acquired
the complex of characteristics which we
call 'Ainu.' But in this complex exist
traces of former lives in far-away lands
and long past cultures.
The Ainu bow is simple-a charac-
teristlc trait of the bows of Austronesia.
They use poison on their arrows, like the
people of the Philippines. They even
attach this poison in the same wav and
use the same kind of forked heads for
their arrows. The war clubs used by
the Anu are unknown to Northern
people, but are used by the Austrone-
SLAMS. The Anus probably had these war
clubs IN the remotest antiquity"