Paleoanthropology in Hokkaidô

Abstract

Recent archeological investigations in Hokkaido have shown that while the prehistoric culture in the southwestern part of the island was closely related with that in the northern part of Honshu throughout the Jomon and epi-Jomon Periods, those in the central and northeastern parts of the island comprised various elements quite alien from Japanese Jomon culture. In succeeding Satsumon Period and historic times, the cultures in Hokkaido have been relatively homogeneous, with the exception of the Okhotsk Coast area which was temporarily occupied by the Okhotsk Culture from the end of the epi-Jomon through the Satsumon Periods. Human skeletal remains excavated so far in Hokkaido were reviewed separately for the three prehistoric cultural areas: the southwestern, the northeastern and the Okhotsk areas. Those from the Jomon sites in the Southwest were found to be closely related in morphological features as well as in metric characteristics with the skeletal remains of the Jomon population in Honshu. Those from later periods in the Southwest, however, showed gradual change to a form more closely resembling the modern southwestern Ainu. On the other hand, the skeletal remains from the Northeast were found to have been very close morphologically to the modern northeastern Ainu since the beginning of the Jomon Period. Skeletal remains derived from the Okhotsk culture area, as represented by the Moyoro shell-heap materials, were found to resemble northern neighbours such as the Sakhalin Ainu, the Gilyak and the Ul'chi. It was tentatively concluded from the above findings and some distance analysis that the form of the Hokkaido Ainu proper was best represented by the modern Ainu in the northeastern part of the island exclusive of the Okhotsk Coast area. Craniological materials collected mainly from the northeastern part of the island by KOGANEI (1893) were analyzed by Mahalanobis' distance method for the purpose of seeking morphological proximity among fifty populations in northern Eurasia, Far East, Oceania, and North America. Among other things, unexpected resemblance was detected between the Ainu and the prehistoric human remains from Alati-Sayan highland in Siberia (ALEKSEEV, 1961). Further developments in archeology and paleoanthropology in Siberia and Hokkaido are needed before any conclusion can be drawn from this interesting finding.

Studies on the affinities of Sakhalin Ainu based on dental characters: The basic populations in East Asia, III.

“…However, the shape factor of dental measurements, which are more useful than size factor in the analysis of population affinities, reveal the general similarity of Sakhalin Ainu and the socalled Neo-Mongoloid populations. These results suggest some gene mixture between southern and northern components in Sakhalin island as stressed by YAMAGUCHI (1973YAMAGUCHI ( , 1974YAMAGUCHI ( , 1981, DODO (1987), ISHIDA (1988, 1990, n.d.), and MOURI (1988.…”

“…At least, we cannot ignore the southern components in the dental characteristics of Sakhalin Ainu. At the same time, we have to unveil the interrelationship between Sakhalin Ainu and Gilyak or Ul'chi as pointed out by YAMAGUCHI (1973YAMAGUCHI ( , 1974.…”

“…The shape of conical vessels is related to the pottery of the Proto-Jomon stage of Japan (LEVIN, 1963). YAMAGUCHI (1973YAMAGUCHI ( , 1974YAMAGUCHI ( , 1981 noted a series of cranial features that appeared to link the northern Mongoloid populations to Sakhalin Ainu, although there were a variety of opinions about the degree of relationship and its taxonomic significance (e.g. TAGAYA, 1987;ISHIDA, 1988ISHIDA, , 1990a.…”

“…The notion that there is a microevolutionary and morphological sequence embracing North Asian Mongoloid populations and Sakhalin Ainu is of long standing (KIYONO, 1949;YAMAGUCHI, 1973YAMAGUCHI, , 1974YAMAGUCHI, , 1981DODO, 1987;ISHIDA, 1988ISHIDA, , 1990KOZINTSEV, 1988).…”

Metric and Nonmetric Cranial Variation of the Prehistoric Okhotsk People.

“…They have been found to show much closer affinities with the Northern Mongoloid populations than with the Jomon or Ainu peoples. As to the origin of the Okhotsk people, many researchers hypothesized that they show close affinities with the Aleut (Kodama, 1948), the Eskimo (Suzuki, 1958), the Ulch and Nanay in the lower Basin of the Amur River (Yamaguchi, 1974(Yamaguchi, , 1981Ishida, 1988a;Kozintsev, 1990Kozintsev, , 1992, or the Nivkh (Kozintsev, 1992).…”