In search of the Ainu''s trace in the Tohoku district, Honshu, Japan: skeletal morphological and genetic perspectives

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Human remains ranging from the protohistoric Kofun to early modern Edo period, unearthed from the Tohoku district, northern Honshu Island of Japan, were examined in respect of skeletal morphology and genetics. Cranial nonmetric and metric analyses demonstrated geographical cline in those traits from Kyushu, through Kanto and Tohoku to Hokkaido. Such geographical cline was most remarkable among the samples of the Kofun period. Though the cline is still evident in the Edo period, it is less traceable in the present-day Japanese due to the samples being morphologically more homogeneous. These findings support the view, so-called "dual structural model" by Hanihara (1991), that the genes of immigrants from mainland East Asia came in the Kyushu district during the Yayoi period and have gradually spread throughout Japan with interbreeding with indigenous descendants from the Jomon.The early modern northern Tohoku people and Hokkaido Ainu were not effectively distinguished from one another by discriminant function analyses using cranial metric data, resulting from the findings of gradual geographical cline: Kyushuy〓Kanto〓Tohoku〓Hokkaido. The Tohoku Kofun samples used were from Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures, not encompassing the specimens from northern Tohoku in the past referred as to "Emishi". The latter were speculated to be more akin to the Jomon-Ainu linage, considering above findings of geographical cline in cranial morphology. There is a long-standing debate about whether the ethnicity of the "Emishi" was Japanese or Ainu. We do not conclude that these people were Ainu or Japanese, but were descending side by side from the Jomon population through protohistoric and historic periods in this region.Mitochondrial DNA analysis found a haplogroup "N9b" in one of 9 specimens of the ancient Tohoku series, which shared with the Jomon people in Hokkaido and Tohoku, as well as Hokkaido Ainu.