Anthropol. Sci. 110(1), 1-32, 2002 |
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| Yukio Dodo and Yoshinori Kawakubo |
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|
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| (Received
December 28, 2001; accepted January 7, 2002) |
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| Abstract
A close resemblance between the prehistoric Jomon
and modern Ainu in skeletal morphology is now widely accepted. To confirm
that the Ainu are actually descenced from the Jomon, all available skulls
of the Epi-Jomon period in Hokkaido, roughly contemporaneous with the
Yayoi and Kofun periods in mainland Japan (ca. 300 BC?700 AD), were
intensively investigated in terms of metric and nonmetric variations.
Craniometric analysis based on Mahalanobis’ D2 distance and canonical
discriminant analysis as well as cranial nonmetric analyses based on
Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence and likelihood ratio analysis yielded
the results that the Jomon, Epi-Jomon and Ainu are closely related with
each other and distant from the mainland Japanese including the northern
Kyushu Yayoi of continental lineage. From these results, we concluded
that the genetic influence of Yayoi immigrants on the Epi-Jomon appears
to have been very limited, if any, and the Epi-Jomon inhabitants in
Hokkaido were transitional in microevolutionary change from the Jomon
in eastern Japan to the Hokkaido Ainu. Key Words: Epi-Jomon, Jomon, Ainu, craniometry, cranial nonmetric trait |
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| (C)Copyright
2002 The Anthropological Society of Nippon |
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