File talk:Historical expanse of Ainu.png

 

Ainu on the Mainland

Richard Zgusta says:

The same process of a steady Ainu influx took place on the mainland where Chinese documents describe a strong Kui (or Kuwei, Kuwu, Kuye, Kugi, i.e. Ainu) presence in the area otherwise dominated by the Gilemi or Jilimi (Nivkh and other Amur peoples).

— Richard Zgusta The Peoples of Northeast Asia Through Time p. 64

Zgusta, Richard (2015). The peoples of Northeast Asia through time : precolonial ethnic and cultural processes along the coast between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait. Leiden, The Netherlands. ISBN 9789004300439. OCLC 912504787.

So should there be some dots in this map on mainland Asia representing Ainu settlements, like there are dots in Honshu?

(This was brought up in an acrimonious discussion here: [1].)

--Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:01, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The Ainu of Sakhalin traded on the mainland as far north as the Amur river. Whether there was an established mainland population, as opposed to just contact, I don't know. The reason Honshu is a light pink is because the identity of the people there as Ainu is controversial, despite the lexical evidence.

I took a look at the ref, but Zgusta describes intermarriage of the Ainu into the mainland peoples. Those lineages all seem to have ended up speaking Nivkh etc. There's no indication in Zgusta that Ainu became established on the mainland.

I just realized the description might not be clear. This was intended as a map of the language family. I have no idea how we would map the people in areas of intermarriage. Personally, I wouldn't think a lineage of Nivkh who trace their descent to an Ainu ancestor would count as Ainu, and I wouldn't want to try to make such judgements. Mapping what people speak is easier.

The dots on Honshu show where there is lexical evidence, either Ainu placenames or villages where people retain Ainu vocabulary, both suggesting that the language used to be spoken there. Kwamikagami (talk) 23:22, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Thank you for your reply. You said, "This was intended as a map of the language family." Based on that statement, does the caption on this image here: [2] that reads "Historical extent of the Ainu people" accurately represent what this map is attempting to portray? Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

More or less. A people and their language are often taken to be coterminous. Hunting ranges and trade networks beyond where people are permanently settled generally aren't included in a basic demographic map. I don't know how extensive or permanent the Ainu presence on the mainland was, if they dominated anywhere or were everywhere a minority within the autochthonous peoples. There's another map, File:Ainu mapa.png (plus a French translation, File:Carte ainu.JPG, etc.), that shows a mainland presence, but I suspect it's was invented based on vague verbal descriptions. For instance, it shows a huge Ainu presence in N. Sakhalin, after a gap in the middle, but the north was primarily Nivkh and presumably there was a cline of Ainu influence, with it least in the north. I could easily be wrong, but I can't find Pindick's original Czech upload description, and no source info was carried over when it was moved to Commons, so the map could just be OR.

More to your question, it would be more accurate to say it's a map of where there is evidence for an Ainu language. But the Honshu range is off-topic for Sakhalin anyway. You might want to sub the Ainu dialect map from the language article, but really, for Sakhalin a map should show the peoples of Sakhalin -- Ainu, Nivkh, and if I remember correctly there was a third. But you might have to create that yourself. Kwamikagami (talk) 02:29, 26 October 2020 (UTC)