The Samurai And The Ainu (Read This Before Seeing The Movie "The Last Samurai")

Science Frontiers ^ | 1989 | Dr C Loring Brace

[blam]

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU

Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu.

Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, not of the Yayoi from whom most modern Japanese are descended. In fact, Brace threw more fuel on the fire with:

"Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi." The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace," I hope you are wrong."

The Ainu and their origin have always been rather mysterious, with some people claiming that the Ainu are really Caucasian or proto-Caucasian - in other words, "white." At present, Brace's study denies this interpretation.

[freedomlover]

Also aren't Pachinko halls the exclusive realm of the Koreans in Japan? When I went to Japan years ago I seem to recall that was the case.

(Talk about sensory overload in one of those places)

[VOA]

I've told no-one but FReeper LucyT about this. How were you able to sense 'something.'

I only stumbled to your post 93 by mere curiosity on the title article.
If I hadn't seen it was a "vintage" thread, I'd not have scanned down.

Hope all is well. And that whatever sort of Providence brought me
here will look well after your sister.

While it's no time for levity...
you know it's well-nigh impossible to keep a secret on Free Republic!

[blam]

Thanks you you all for your concern and prayers. I got word this morning that things aren't serious and that all indications are on the edge of a minor heart attack. Some partial blockage in veins to the heart that will be treated on an out-patient basis. She is scheduled to go home tomorrow morning. She had been visiting her children and grandchildren in Houston and apparently 'over did it.' She started having problems the morning she got back from Houston. Again, thanks.

[Quix]

THANKS TONS for your prayers!

[Quix]

AMEN!

[Quix]

Very blessed to hear the news, blam.

YEA AND PTL for all concerned.

[fanfan]

That's great news Blam!

:-)

[Marysecretary]

My prayers for your sister. I had my first heart attack, which ended up with a double bypass, two years ago, and in March I had a second, with a stent put in. I'm 67 and doing fine. It's amazing what they can do now. May God's peace be with you and your family at this time. Love, Mxxx

[brytlea]

I'm praying for your sister and also for you and your family. May God give you peace in this time of trouble.
susie

[rintense]

Prayers for your sister, blam. Hang in there.

[blam]

Thank you.

[brytlea]

Prayer is good for both the person praying and the person prayed to, so you hardly have to thank me! God Bless you for posting.

:)
susie

[Ciexyz]

Prayers offered up for your sister, blam. And here's wishing you peace of mind.

Thanks, quix, for the ping.

[blam]

Thanks. She went home yesterday and is recovering very well.

[Quix]

Thanks for the news, blam. Much appreciated.

Congrats all around. May her recovery be total and may all her relationships be deeply enriched from it all.

[gaijin]

EXCELLENT POST..! Damn!

[Sherman Logan]

My daughter is 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 Caucasian. Her "race" is Eurasian. ... Later on what she will have to face is intellectual discrimination since that combination has an extremely high academic bar - how silly! I just read in The Economist that they (Asians) must do 25% better in exams whereas lower scores are more acceptable from other groups competitng for the same slot in higher education.

She really ought to consider putting down her race as "white" when she signs up for college. Force the school to argue the point, which they usually aren't anxious to do.

If Obama can choose to be black, surely your daughter can choose to be white.

[blam]

Amazing Jomon Japan

Archaeologists and historicans worldwide are fascinated with thousands of artefacts that have been dug up all over Japan that belonged to and that tell us about the prehistoric people we call the Jomon people.

Who were the Jomon people and where did they live?

The Jomon people were hunter-gathers who lived in pit dwellings and who lived roughly in the area that we call Japan today. The Jomon culture is noted for having produced the earliest (or at least among the earliest) pottery in the world.

When did they live?

The Jomon people lived during postglacial times from 13,680 BC to 410 BC. They were a hunting-gathering-fishing tribal culture that existed roughly around the times of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Nile and the Indus Valley.

What was so amazing about the Jomon culture?

#1. One thing amazing about the Jomon culture is how long the Jomon way of life lasted … over 13,000 thousand years as well as the early date of the beginning of the period.

#2. The Jomon people are thought to have produced the oldest surviving examples of pottery in the world.

#3. Jomon people achieved sedentism which means they settled down in one place to live as early as 9,000 years ago and maintained a high level of craft production…all very unusual for hunter-gatherers in early postglacial times.

#4. Archaeologists think the Jomon hunting-gathering culture was unusual because although it was a stone age culture (historians call prehistoric people who used stone tools a Mesolithic culture), it also had some highly complex characteristics of Neolithic cultures which usually refers to people who: made many clay vessels,

had an organized and sophisticated lifestyle of collecting and foraging for food and practiced a simple kind of agriculture by cultivating a small number of plants.

“That end of the Ice Age was accompanied by the first of the two most decisive changes in the Japanese history: the invention of pottery. In the usual experience of archeologists, inventions flow from mainlands to islands, and small peripheral societies aren’t supposed to contribute revolutionary advances to the rest of the world. It therefore astonished archeologists to discover that the world’s oldest known pottery was made in Japan 12,700 years ago,” said Jared Diamond, a non-fiction science author.

What is the Jomon culture famous for?

Jomon culture is most famous for its pottery — Jomon pottery pieces are possibly the earliest existing pottery artefacts, or at least among the earliest pottery discoveries in the world. Jomon culture is also well known for the expressiveness of its ceramic art, for the variety of surface textures, decorations, shapes and styles.

The most elaborate forms of pottery made in the deep central mountainous areas are especially admired. In fact, the Jomon culture takes its name from a typical form of decoration of its pots, cord marking which is called Jomon 縄文 in Japanese.

The different periods of the Jomon era are divided according to the different characteristics of pottery of each period, see this Chronology here.

The Jomon culture is also renowned for the fishing technology. The fishhooks and togglehead harpoons that the Jomon hunters used to catch fish and sea mammals with, were state-of-the-art technology, for prehistoric times that is.

[blam]

Jomon Mariners

One day, during the Stone Age, when Ice Age glaciers were just receding, a small group of Jomon mariners left their homes in a temperate forest of Japan, pushed a primitive canoe to the water’s edge, and set out toward the Arctic. Eventually they crossed the Pacific, one of the most tempestuous oceans in the world.

Kennewick Man

We know that they completed their journey because anthropologists have found the bones of Stone Age east Asians in muddy riverbanks and dry desert caves of North America. This reconstruction shows an artist’s rendition of Kennewick Man, who died between 9,300 and 9,600 years ago in Eastern Washington. Kennewick Man has a narrow face, more similar to the Jomon of Japan than to northeast Asians and the modern Amerindians.

Bering Sea Land Bridge Mammoth Hunters

An old paradigm stated that the first migrants to the Americas were Northeast Siberian mammoth hunters who walked across the Bering Land Bridge, trudged south across the massive glaciers that blanketed British Columbia, and then colonized North America. But this hypothesis doesn’t explain the observed chronology precisely, nor does it explain how people found food during their long crossing of the barren glaciers. And finally, Kennewick Man was clearly not a northeast Siberian mammoth hunter, but a Jomon mariner.

The Jomon were Proven Mariners

Some of the earliest Stone Age skeletons in North America had an isotopic composition similar to that of dolphins, indicating that these people ate seafood primarily. Fishnet fragments have been found in ancient North American settlements. Anthropologists have dug up skeletons of Stone Age North Americans on islands off the coast of California and British Columbia. The Jomon were proven mariners. All of these observations indicate that early settlers to the Americas were sailors and fisher people.

Why did the Jomon People Migrate?

Why did Jomon with primitive stone tools leave their comfortable homes, with salmon in the rivers and deer in the forests – to paddle across the storm-tossed Arctic? In the Wake of the Jomon argues that pragmatism, alone, wasn’t sufficient. People wandered north for romantic adventure or a spiritual quest. If you accept this hypothesis, then you must ask: Why has the uncompromising hand of evolution preserved such outlandish behavior in the gene pool? By examining these questions, we begin to appreciate the adventurous spirit in all of us.

[blam]

Ancient Jomon DNA From Hokkaido

January 28, 2009

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of the Jomon and Epi-Jomon individuals in Hokkaido, Japan.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology

N. Adachi1, K. Shinoda2, K. Umetsu3, Y. Dodo1. 1Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, 2Department of Anthropology, National Science Museum, Tokyo, 3Department of Experimental and Forensic Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Yamagata University.

From the morphological point of view, prehistoric populations in Hokkaido are considered to have been least influenced by Yayoi immigrants. Therefore, genetic study of these people can be expected to provide important information on the genealogy of the early settlers of the Japanese archipelago.

In the present study, we examined the genealogy of the seventy-six Jomon and Epi-Jomon skeletons excavated in Hokkaido, Japan by mitochondrial DNA analysis.
To identify their genealogy securely, we analyzed the coding region of mtDNA by using amplified product-length polymorphisms (Umetsu et al., 2001, 2005) and direct sequencing.
We also sequenced the segments of two hypervariable regions of mtDNA, and assigned the mtDNA under study to relevant haplogroups using the known mtDNA databases.

Haplogroups D4, G1, M7a, and N9b were observed in the individuals, and N9b was by far the most predominant. The requencies of the haplogroups were quite different from any modern populations including Ainu and Okinawans. Haplogroup N9b is hitherto observed almost only in Japanese populations; therefore, this haplogroup might be the (pre-) Jomon contribution to the modern Japanese mtDNA pool.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Jomon skeletons from the Funadomari site, Hokkaido, and its implication for the origins of Native American

Ancient DNA recovered from 16 Jomon skeletons excavated from Funadomari site, Hokkaido, Japan was analyzed to elucidate the genealogy of the early settlers of the Japanese archipelago.
Both the control and coding regions of their mitochondrial DNA were analyzed in detail, and we could securely assign 14 mtDNAs to relevant haplogroups. Haplogroups D1a, M7a, and N9b were observed in these individuals, and N9b was by far the most predominant.

The fact that haplogroups N9b and M7a were observed in Hokkaido Jomons bore out the hypothesis that these haplogroups are the (pre-) Jomon contribution to the modern Japanese mtDNA pool.
Moreover, the fact that Hokkaido Jomons shared haplogroup D1 with Native Americans validates the hypothesized genetic affinity of the Jomon people to Native Americans, providing direct evidence for the genetic relationships between these populations.
However, probably due to the small sample size or close consanguinity among the members of the site, the frequencies of the haplogroups in Funadomari skeletons were quite different from any modern populations, including Hokkaido Ainu, who have been regarded as the direct descendant of the Hokkaido Jomon people.
It appears that the genetic study of ancient populations in northern part of Japan brings important information to the understanding of human migration in northeast Asia and America.