Word: ainu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mists of prehistory. In trying to reconstruct the "ancestral environment," evolutionary psychologists analyze the nearest approximations available--the sort of technologically primitive societies that the Una bomber extols. The most prized examples are the various hunter-gatherer societies that anthropologists have studied this century, such as the Ainu of Japan, the !Kung San of southern Africa and the Ache of South America. Also valuable are societies with primitive agriculture in the few cases where--as with some Yanomamo villages in Venezuela--they lack the contaminating contact with moderners that reduces the anthropological value of some hunter-gatherer societies...
...determination might now be the stronger. All over the world, ethnic movements are demanding and frequently getting their own turf, sometimes though not always complete with flag, army, currency and United Nations seat. The secessionist groups range in size from the 50 million citizens of Ukraine to 30,000 Ainu, descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of northern Japan. They demand "exclusive possession" of two or three small islands in the southern Kuriles -- also claimed by Moscow and Tokyo -- where they can cluster and preserve their culture...