PREHISTORIC JAPAN—BAELZ. 527 
Sakhalin to meet the possibility of a dry-shod immigration from the 
mainland. 
From the geological history of the British Isles we know the fact 
that not merely once but twice they were connected with the continent 
and twice separated from it. The sea floor sank and rose and fell 
again from 150 to 200 meters. In the Paleolithic age there was no 
English Channel. 
Now, if the sea floor between Korea and Japan lay only 130 meters 
higher than it does to-day, Japan would cease to be an island. It 
would be an extension of the continent upon which the people of the 
Paleolithic and Neolithic ages, even unversed in maritime enterprise, 
could wander dry-shod. The whole Liukiu chain, too, would have 
been connected with Japan, and there also we find Aino-like hairy 
men, whose women folk tattoo their hands just as do the Aino women. 
A less widely accepted theory is that the Ainos are related to the 
primitive inhabitants of Australia. This is founded on the actual 
resemblance often noted of the two types. On the other hand, there 
are essential differences. 
Now the question is, were the Ainos really the first settlers in Japan 
or was there another people before them? This latter opinion has 
several supporters, being vigorously upheld by Mr. J. Tsuboi, pro- 
fessor of anthropology at the University of Tokyo. 
In ancient Japanese tales and legends mention is frequently made 
of the so-called Tsuchigumo—that is, earthspiders or cave dwellers. 
On the other hand, the Ainos myths tell us of Koropokguru, and also 
of Kobito or dwarfs. The first is an Aino word, the second a Jap- 
anese word adopted by the Ainos. Koropokguru is commonly con- 
strued to mean men who lived beneath a certain sort of burdock with 
enormous leaves (Petasites japonicus), and who were therefore very 
small. But, in the first place, these burdocks grew so large in Yezo 
that a big man could stand beneath them, and in the second place, 
according to Batchelor, the highest authority on the Aino language. 
the word Koropokguru means nothing more than earth dweller, and 
consequently applies only to the inhabitants of the dwellings known 
to the Kurile Ainos to this day. It can not therefore be taken as 
evidence of the existence of a dwarfish race before the Aino. 
This is very important, for it concerns the question as to whether 
the shell heaps found in great numbers all over Japan, with their 
rich contents of stone implements, pottery, human figures of clay, 
bones, and the like, are relics of the Ainos or whether they come from 
a still earlier people who might be considered to have been Koro- 
pokguru. 
The afore-mentioned missionary, Mr. Batchelor, who lived for 
thirty years among the Ainos and devoted his life to teaching and 
studying them, rejects the Koropokguru hypothesis as entirely un- 
