PREHISTORIC JAPAN—BAELZ. 547 
them. But their most similar counterparts existed in prehistoric 
Northern Europe. 
In summing up the whole subject briefly we may say: The oldest 
inhabitants of Japan known to us, the Ainos, lived in the stone age 
and have left their traces in the shell heaps and many other places. 
Formerly they inhabited the whole island, but were gradually pressed 
towards the north, where the stone age prevailed even within the last 
thousand years, and where the products of that age reached the 
highest state of development. The present Ainos make pottery no 
longer; they have for a long time obtained their pottery and other 
vessels from the Japanese, when they could not use their own wood 
utensils. 
In the second place, there lived in the southwestern part a people 
of the bronze age who did not reach the isthmus and the Biwa Lake 
towards the north. These either drove out or subjugated the aborig- 
ines of this region. 
Finally there appeared in the southwest a conquering people 
of an iron-age culture that took possession of the territory of the 
bronze people and gradually extended their dominion over the whole 
island empire. In the seventh century A. D. they had only pene- 
trated as far as the region somewhat north of Tokyo, near Sendaig. 
In central Japan, in Yamato and Idzumo, they had encountered and 
subdued organized tribes which were not in the bronze age, for there 
are no bronze weapons found in Yamato. Whether these tribes still 
used stone weapons or whether, as is far more probable, they already 
had iron is an open question. 
