Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/40

 shells in large quantities, fragments of broken bones, implements of stone and horn, and potter}of a special type, which differed from the ancient Japanese earthenware in being hand-made instead of turned on a wheel, and also in shape and ornamentation. Human bones were among those found, and Professor Morse considers the way in which they had been broken to be indicative of cannibalism.

We know from history that the ancient Japanese were to some extent pit-dwellers; but no remains of such dwellings are now known to exist. In Yezo, however, and the adjacent islands, large numbers of pits which have been used as human habitations are still to be seen. They are rectangular in shape, measuring about twenty feet by fifteen feet, and having a depth of three or four feet. In these were planted posts, over which a roofing of thatch was placed. They were probably occupied chiefly as winter habitations. Professor Milne thinks that they were made by a race who inhabited Yezo and the northern parts of Japan before the Ainos, and who were driven northwards by the encroachments of the latter. The present inhabitants of the Kurile Islands he believes to be their modern representatives. Both they and the ancestors of the Ainos must have had a low type of civilisation. They had no iron or even copper or bronze implements, and were probably entirely unacquainted with the art of agriculture.

The early history of the continental race which has peopled Japan is wrapped in obscurity. Whence and when they came, and what was the character of their civilisation at the period of their arrival, are questions to which only the vaguest answers, can be given. The earliest notices of them, in Chinese literature, date from the first and second centuries of the Christian era. It would appear that the Japanese were then a much more advanced race than the Ainos ever became. They were agriculturists, not merely hunters and fishers, and were acquainted with the arts of weaving, brewing, and the building of junks. They had a sovereign who