Were the Ainu people of Japan actually white?

rusvik

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1. In northern Japan, on the island of Hokkaido and a part of the Russian Sakhalin Island, lives a mysterious ethnic group, called Ainu, whose origins represents a mystery. They are very distinct from the Japanese people and, before the Tungus invasion coming from mainland Asia (Korea and northern China), the whole archipelago was inhabited by Ainu.

Ainu are shorter than the Japanese people, with lighter skin, robust body and short limbs. Unlike typical Mongoloids, their hair is wavy and the body hair is abundant; men wear large beards and mustaches, considered a sign of beauty, to the point that married women tattoo their lower face to mimic a beard. Ainu have not such pronounced almond-shaped eyes and lack the Mongoloid fold of the eye; the nose is large and straight. All these point to their origin in Polynesia or southeastern Asia.

2. One of the strangest Ainu habit is the cult of the bear. Bears are considered powerful spirits which can act on the benefit of the people. When Ainu manage to capture a bear cub, a woman is charged to take care of it as if a child: the little bear lives and grows amongst the people of the village, getting accustomed to them. When it is 2-3 years old, the bear is sacrificed. The men drink its blood to get its power, and then they cut the head off and then fly the skin of the bear. Later, during family ceremonies, the bear skin occupies a prominent place, and food and drink is offered to it like to an honored guest. The bear was considered by the Ainu the mythological hero that taught them to fish, hunt, weave and so on.
Sounds like Vikings to me?

9-Amazing-Things-About-the-Ainu-People-2.jpg


ainu-face1.jpg


Typical mainstream says they are South East Asian or Polynesian, but I never saw a Polynesian or South East Asian who looked like that with such a beard. I saw plenty of Russians like that though.

Could it be the white man can claim Japan as a country for himself?

Maybe that is why white people feel such a longing for Japan?
 


No.

According to the following article,

According to genetic tests, the Ainu people belong mainly to Y-DNA haplogroup D2 (a haplogroup that is found uniquely in and frequently throughout Japan including Okinawa with its closest relations being Tibetans and Andaman Islanders in the Indian Ocean). On the paternal side, the vast majority (87.5%) of the Ainu were, according to a 2004 study to be of Asian-specific YAP+ lineages (Y-haplogroups D-M55* and D-M125), that were only distributed in the Japanese Archipelago. The Ainu exhibited no other Y-haplogroups (i.e. none of the common East Asian C-M8, O-M175*, and O-M122* haplogroups) and shared no other Y-DNA in common in mainland Japanese and Okinawans.

According to a 2005 study, haplogroup D originated in Eurasia OR in sub-Saharan Africa, but reached higher frequency outside of Africa and during the human migration out of Africa, and that its emergence coincided with the spread of domestication and emergence of cities from the Middle East.

...Genetic testing showed a varied picture of the maternal lines, with the presence of mitochondrial DNA - haplogroup Y (21.6%), haplogroup M7a (and M7a1) (15.7%), haplogroup D – especially D4, and haplogroup G.
MtDNA haplogroup Y shows likely the genetic influence from the Nivkhs, (although it is also present in the Tungusic peoples, Koreans, Mongols (including Kalmyks and Buryats), Tajiks, Chinese and other Central Asians, South Siberian Turkic peoples (e.g. Tuvans, Todjins, Soyots). The presence of Y1 lineages (Y is restricted to Northeast Asians and Ainu) among the Ainu also points to the migration route, from Siberian populations to the northernmost populations of the Japanese islands (fitting well with the archaeological record) but poses separate events from the settlement by M7a and M7b peoples.
M7 has been detected so far in China, Vietnam, the West Siberian Mansi, Mongols and island Southeast Asia, apart from from the Korean peninsula and Japanese islands where the subclades expanded. Haplogroup M7a has been found in Southeast Asia-Taiwan, but mainly among Japanese and Ryukyuans. Haplogroup M7 is seen as characteristically distributed in East Asia while M7a is regarded as its daughter group specific for (pre-Jomon to Jomon) Japanese populations (while M7b2 is specific for Korean populations).


Always go by the DNA rather than superficial cultural things like "they currently like beards" - that stuff waxes and wanes over time. eg the Romans were clean shaven, medieval Europe was beardy, 18th C Europe was clean shaven, Victorian Europe was beardy and now the fashion is clean shaven again!
 
There is not a single south east asian or pacific islander who can sport such an impressive beard.

Those are not Asian people in those pictures, use your eyes.
 
Pretty sure the vikings were tall motherfuckers.

I always thought some Japanese people were mixed up with native island tribes or even some russians because it's true that they're the only asians that can grow facial hair like white people... doesn't mean they have caucasian genes though. Many other ethnicities in the pacific have facial hair and white-like features.
 
Here is an analysis of Y DNA haplogroups for Scandinavians

They are mainly I1 and Ria plus some other lineages. There is no D2 there at all. Therefore they are unrelated.

Beards are not proof of anything - the obscure the face and can be fashioned to look like any cultural style you want!
 
Regarding Mitochondrial DNA (maternal line), here's the European tree:

mtdna-haplogroup-chart.gif


As you can see, Y, M, D G, are COMPLETELY absent. They belong to the Asian tree (of which the Ainu are part).
 
Could it be the white man can claim Japan as a country for himself?

"Dude, look at your ancestors. There's no way those are Asian beards, so sorry, but Japan is now ours. You guys can go move over to Mongolia or something".

EDIT: If Japanese were white, we'd be able to build better computers, cameras, and robots.
 
The plot thickens:
AN anthropologist has concluded that the exalted samurai, the legendary warriors who were idealized as the epitome of everything Japanese, were actually descended from the lowly Ainu, an ethnic group that is considered primitive by most Japanese and is often the target of their discrimination.

Like the Ainu, the samurai had more body hair, lighter skin and higher-bridged, Europeanlike noses than most Japanese. Indeed, nearly all of the physical characteristics of the samurai, celebrated in art and held high in social esteem, are those that closely resemble the facial features of the 18,000 Ainu who live on the northern island of Hokkaido.

Exalted Warriors, Humble Roots - NYTimes.com

Strong white warriors were the samurai amongst small asians? Sounds about right.
 
Exalted Warriors, Humble Roots - NYTimes.com

This article is facinating, written before the worst of pc.

Other gems:

''The early samurai came mostly from areas that had been inhabited by Ainu,'' Dr. Reischauer said, ''but there had been a mixing of people for several hundred years.''

These differences in the Ainu, as well as their lighter skin color, gave rise to a belief that they could well be related to Caucasians. In some histories, the Ainu are described as proto-Caucasoid people, a group that split off from the white race so early that not all the characteristics of the race had yet developed.
 
^^^ You can call them "proto-Caucasoid" if that's what floats your boat - you can call them whatever you like.

But the DNA doesn't match which means they arn't related to Europeans! An Asian by any other name is still an Asian.

In fact you couldn't have picked a group with less in common with Europeans genetically than the Ainu. Scandinavians have more in common with Algerians (eg incidence of Mt DNA Haplogroup H) than they do with "lighter skin colour" Ainu.

Skin colour is derived from latitude and how small the founding population was (i.e. if the Ainu got to the very cold north Japan before the other populations did, and their founding group was tiny, then any evolution to light skin would have "stuck". Doesn't mean that that magically makes them "European".

They're on the "M" part of the Mt DNA tree, which means the last time they had any connection with the European branch was a good 70,000 years ago (i.e. very shortly after we all left Africa). Europeans are all derivatives of the "N" part of the tree.

Here's an overview:

ftdna-map.gif


Why are you so resistant to the DNA evidence and so keen on hypotheses made before the genome was sequenced??