Anthropological reconstruction of the Ainu appearance and their position in the pancumenous system of the brain skull craniotypes

Despite great scholarly interest in the Ainu, the formation of this people's unique physical appearance which combines attributes of all the three great human races has not been fully explained yet. The Ainu's place in the context of anthropological variability has never been clearly defined in craniological studies before. Following Professor Viktor V. Bunak's call for the development of a craniological classification of humankind needed for research on paleoanthropological materials, one of the authors of this article has proposed a modern humanity's craniological classification based on variability in the size and shape of the human skull. This classification is different from the generally accepted ones, which draw mainly on varied descriptive characteristics found in living human populations. This article presents the results of a study on the Ainu craniological series within the proposed craniological programme. The study allowed determining the position of the Ainu craniotype among the crani-ogroups of the modern human population. Specifically, we define the Ainu as being part of the local type of macrotropids, which retains some relict features of physical appearance due to its isolation. Along with the Ainu, some groups of Indians, Polynesians and Eskimos can be seen as representing the craniotype of macrotropids. It is noteworthy that the selected groups inhabit the peripheral territories of the Earth. Graphics-based and sculptural reconstructions were created on 19^th century Ainu skulls for the first time, showing this people's appearance prior to their metisation. The anthropological reconstruction was conducted using the programme ‘Algorithm of Appearance', which, in addition to images, produced a detailed anthropological description of the appearance and intravital dimensions of the head.

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