Maricon Power writes:
Robert Lindsay, why do pure Ainu have lighter skinned than Japanese? Are Ainu Northern Australoids (cold adapted Australoids?) or are they pigmented? I’ve seen pigmented Tamils and Veddas that look almost European; even the Australian aborigines would.
Look at this map of glacier cover in Japan at the height of the last glaciation about 20,000 years ago.
It shows the Hokkaido (Ainu land) living in a climate different from every other Asian countries.
Glaciation in Japan at the height of the last Ice Age 20,000 YBP.
The Ainu are indeed cold adapted Australoids, and they are actually Vedda types. A comparison of Veddoids and Ainu will show that they match perfectly.
The map of Ainu land is not correct. 20,000 YBP there were no Ainu in Japan. The ancestors of the Ainu are the Jomon. Jomonese skulls line up perfectly with skulls from Thailand 16,000 YBP. The Jomonese show up in Japan 13,000 YBP. So the Jomon left Thailand sometime between 16,000 and 13,000 YBP and made their way eventually up to Japan. When they first arrived in Japan, the Jomonese ranged over the entire country. They were not in Hokkaido alone.
They only ended up in Hokkaido when the Yayoi came from Korea to Japan 2,300 YBP and slowly conquered their way up the island, defeating and displacing the Ainu along the way. The Ainu were eventually pushed up to Hokkaido where the Japanese no longer pursued them much. Hokkaido is where they were found when modern anthropology discovered them in the modern area, but they have not always been located only there.