On the Ainu People...

Ainu folk are an ethnic group indigenous to the Japanese archipelago, whose historical basis dates back at least 16,500 years.

They are first attested in the archaeological record during the Incipient Jōmon period (14,500 – 8,000 BCE). The word Jōmon is a Japanese translation of "cord-marked", in reference to their pottery style which exhibited cord marks not dissimilar to the Indo-European Corded Ware Culture of Northern Europe.

The Ainu were displaced through ethnocide and miscegenation when Japonic speakers invaded the archipelago c. 900 – 300 BCE, pushing them to the northern extremity of Japan.