Ainu Mythology - Origins

Origins

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the Jōmon-jin people, who lived in Japan from the Jōmon period. One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "They lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came."

Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated in a merger of the Okhotsk culture with the Satsumon, one of the ancient archaeological cultures that are considered to have derived from the Jōmon period cultures of the Japanese Archipelago. Their economy was based on farming, as well as hunting, fishing and gathering.

Full-blooded Ainu, compared to people of Yamato descent, often have lighter skin and more body hair. Many early investigators proposed a Caucasian ancestry, although recent DNA tests have not shown any genetic similarity with modern Europeans. Cavalli-Sforza places the Ainu in his "Northeast and East Asian" genetic cluster.

Mark J. Hudson Professor of Anthropology at Nishikyushu University, Kanzaki, Saga, Japan, said Japan was settled by a "Proto-Mongoloid" population in the Pleistocene who became the Jōmon and their features can be seen in the Ainu and Okinawan people. The Jōmon share many physical characteristics with Caucasians, but Brace says that they are a separate genetic stock.

Anthropologist Arnold Henry Savage Landor described the Ainu as having deep-set eyes and an eye shape typical of Europeans, with a large and prominent browridge, large ears, hairy and prone to baldness, slightly flattened hook nose with large and broad nostrils, prominent cheek bones, large mouth and thick lips and a long region from nose to mouth and small chin region.

Omoto has also shown that the Ainu are Mongoloid, and not Caucasoid, on the basis of fingerprints and dental morphology.

Ainu men have abundant, wavy hair and often have long beards. In the book of "Ainu life and legends" by author Kyōsuke Kindaichi (published by the Japanese Tourist Board in 1942) contains the physical description of Ainu : Many have wavy hair, but some straight black hair. Very few of them have wavy brownish hair. Their skins are generally reported to be light brown. But this is due to the fact that they labor on the sea and in briny winds all day. Old people who have long desisted from their outdoor work are often found to be as white as western men. The Ainu have broad faces, beetling eyebrows, and large sunken eyes, which are generally horizontal and of the so-called European type. Eyes of the Mongolian type are hardly found among them.

Genetic testing has shown them to belong mainly to Y-haplogroup D-M55. Y-DNA haplogroup D2 is found frequently throughout the Japanese Archipelago including Okinawa. The only places outside of Japan in which Y-haplogroup D is common are Tibet and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.

In a study by Tajima et al. (2004), two out of a sample of sixteen (or 12.5%) Ainu men have been found to belong to Haplogroup C-M217, which is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among the indigenous populations of the Russian Far East and Mongolia. Hammer et al. (2006) have tested a sample of four Ainu men and have found that one of them belongs to haplogroup C-M217. Some researchers have speculated that this minority of Haplogroup C-M217 carriers among the Ainu may reflect a certain degree of unidirectional genetic influence from the Nivkhs, a traditionally nomadic people of northern Sakhalin and the adjacent mainland, with whom the Ainu have long-standing cultural interactions. Studies published in 2004 and 2007 show the combined frequency of M7a and N9b to be at least 28% in Okinawans (7/50 M7a1, 6/50 M7a(xM7a1), 1/50 N9b), 17.6% in Ainus (8/51 M7a(xM7a1), 1/51 N9b), and 10% (97/1312 M7a(xM7a1), 1/1312 M7a1, 28/1312 N9b) to 17% (15/100 M7a1, 2/100 M7a(xM7a1)) in mainstream Japanese.

Based on analysis of one sample of 51 modern Ainus, their mtDNA lineages have been reported to consist mainly of haplogroup Y (11/51 = 21.6% according to Tanaka et al. 2004, or 10/51 = 19.6% according to Adachi et al. 2009, who have cited Tajima et al. 2004), haplogroup D (9/51 = 17.6%, particularly D4(xD1)), haplogroup M7a (8/51 = 15.7%), and haplogroup G1 (8/51 = 15.7%). Other mtDNA haplogroups detected in this sample include A (2/51), M7b2 (2/51), N9b (1/51), B4f (1/51), F1b (1/51), and M9a (1/51). Most of the remaining individuals in this sample have been classified definitively only as belonging to macro-haplogroup M.

Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup Y is otherwise found mainly among Nivkhs, and with lower frequency among Tungusic peoples, Koreans, Mongols (including Kalmyks and Buryats), Chinese, Japanese, Central Asians, South Siberian Turkic peoples (e.g. Tuvans, Todjins, Soyots), Koryaks, Alyutors, Itelmens, Taiwanese aborigines, Filipinos, Indonesians, and Malaysians. MtDNA Haplogroup D is found frequently throughout East Asia and Central Asia, and is also common in some populations of North Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Americas; in addition, it has been found with low frequency in some populations of Europe and Southwest Asia. Haplogroup M7a has been found elsewhere mainly among Japanese and Ryukyuans, and with lower frequency among Udegeys, Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Taiwanese aborigines, Buryats, Central Asians, and Waars of the Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, India. MtDNA Haplogroup G has been found most frequently among indigenous populations of easternmost Siberia, but it is also common among some populations of East Asia, Central Asia, the Altai-Sayan region of southern Siberia, and the sub-Himalayan region.

A recent reevaluation of cranial traits suggests that the Ainu resemble the Okhotsk more than they do the Jōmon. This agrees with the reference to the Ainu being a merger of Okhotsk and Satsumon referenced above.