Note 918 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

For man, too, islands and their sister areas of isolation, mountains, are areas of survivals. The shrinking remnants of that half-dwarf Negrito stock which may have formed the aboriginal population of southern Asia are found to-day only in the mountains of peninsular India and in island groups like the Andaman and the Philippines. But even in the Philippines, they are confined either to the mountainous interiors of the larger islands, or to little coastal islets like Polillo, Alabat, Jomalig, and others.918 [See map page 147.] Yezo, Sakhalin and the Kurile Isles harbor the last feeble remnants of the Ainos, a primitive people who formerly occupied a long stretch of the Asiatic coast south of the Amur mouth. The protected environment of these islands has postponed the doom of extinction toward which the Ainos are hastening.919 With insular conservatism they dress, live and seek their food on the sea to-day, just as depicted in Japanese art and literature at the dawn of history.920 [See map page 103.]