PREHISTORIC RACE DYING OUT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12064, 20 July 1917, Page 8

PREHISTORIC RACE DYING OUT.

Japan's prehistoric tribe is dying our.. The famous hairy Ainus. predecessors of tho little yellow men, in possession of Yezo, will he extinct within a century. So say the .Japanese census reports. Indeed, if t.he dentil rate continues as t lias continued to increase in all likelihood tho Ainu will become a, creature of the past; within thirty years. The tall, timid, shaggy, prehistoric tribesmen aiv vanishing as have vanished the natives of the West Indian Islands and the bushmen of Australia. Vet time has been when the Ain us owned tho entire jj;roup of islands now constituting the Japanese nation. Their stone implements are to bo. found on Xip'pon and Formosa. The Ainus 1 decline in numbers is directly attributable to the failure of their meat and fish supplyTho Ainus are remarkable for the extreme hairiness of the men and for peculiar tattooing: among the women. The Ainu is apparently not an Oriental, but a fragment of a Neolithic white race. 711 1003 there were 17,f8.'J Ainus. To-day there are only 12,000.