When in the 17th century Russian travelers reached the “farthest east”, where, as it seemed to them, the mainland ends, a strange picture appeared to their eyes. In the middle of the endless ocean rose vast and numerous islands inhabited by people.
The appearance of the foreigners amazed the explorers to the depths of their souls: people overgrown with thick beards with wide, like those of Europeans, eyes, with large protruding noses, thick lips, in caftans, fur hats, chuns and with a snuff box tucked into their belt.
Seeing such a miracle, the Russian discoverers at first decided that they were men from somewhere in the Volga region or Siberia, or, in extreme cases, gypsies, but certainly not Mongoloids, whom our Cossacks met everywhere beyond the Urals. Travelers dubbed the aborigines furry Kuril, but these people called themselves "Ainu", which means "man".
Many centuries have passed since then, but researchers are still struggling with the countless mysteries of this people and still have not come to a definite conclusion. Indeed, where did people so similar to Russians come from on the Kuriles and Sakhalin?
Why "furry", being surrounded by Mongoloid peoples, sharply differed from them in appearance? Why did their men wear beards as healthy as the Russian Old Believers? After all, every one of the neighboring peoples, including Kamchadals, Yakuts, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese, never wore a beard.
Where, finally, did they come to these rugged islands? No answer. If we assume that the Ainu came from Russia, then the question arises: how people in the Stone Age could overcome such great distances?
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The longer Russian travelers watched the Ainu, the more they were amazed at their order. It turned out that the locals are big fans of the bear. The bear figured almost in all Ainu tales and legends.
The most important holiday of the year was also dedicated to the bear. It is curious that exactly the same cult of the toptygin was observed in Russia, or rather, among the peoples of the Russian North and Siberia. Another coincidence that makes one think about the kinship of our peoples, but only the Ainu fed the little bear cub with the milk of a female nurse.
Like the peoples who inhabited the Russian taiga and tundra, the Ainu went to the forest for prey, from where they brought a little clubfoot. But if representatives of other peoples put the baby in a special wooden crate, then the Ainu left him in the house of a nursing mother. And she "supplied" milk not only to her own children, but also to the forest adoptive.
The fluffy lump was treated like a child - they bathed, took for a walk, looked after. Looking at such miracles, Russian travelers threw up their hands, because the Ainu were so dexterous with the bear, as if they knew some secret language of animals.
But the bear's fate was decided from the very beginning. When he was growing up, he was killed during a holiday dedicated to him. The bones of the toptygin were placed in a special barn, in which, over the decades, many remains of bears killed in hunting and at similar celebrations were collected.
The Ainu sincerely apologized to the bear: if they had not killed him, how would his soul ascend to the mountain spirits and tell them that the Ainu are infinitely devoted to the deities?
At the Sakhalin Ainu bear festival.
When the Russians discovered the "furry smokers", they did not exhaust themselves much with labor - they only hunted and caught fish. But before they worked the land, they were engaged in ceramics - traces of these activities could be found on the islands. In ancient times, the Ainu created amazingly beautiful jugs and plates, mysterious dogu figurines, and decorated their homes with unique spiral patterns.
It is unclear what caused them to abandon almost all their traditional activities, thereby taking a step back in cultural development. The legends of the Ainu tell about fabulous treasures, fortresses and castles, but the Japanese and then Europeans found this tribe living in uncomfortable huts, dugouts and caves.
The Ainu did not have a written language, their language was not like any other, and the counting system was very original: they counted twenty. When the Japanese colonized the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin, they began to teach the aborigines the Japanese language, so that they quickly assimilated.
The Ainu learned the Japanese literacy with difficulty, but little by little the Ainu language began to be supplanted by the Japanese, and by the middle of the 20th century it had almost sunk into oblivion, like most Ainu, by the way.
After World War II, the “furry smokers” inhabiting Sakhalin ended up in Hokkaido and mixed with the local population. The few representatives of this people preferred not to protrude, so it was easier to adapt to a new life.
In the 1990s, in the Land of the Rising Sun, they tried to revive the Ainu language, but, as you know, it is not possible to break it - nothing came of the idea. The people who still consider themselves Ainu can be counted on one hand.
Used materials from the article by Vladimir Strogov from the site oracle-today.ru