The historical Ainu of (southern) Hokkaido appear to be a fusion of this culture, known archeologically as Satsumon, and the very different Nivkh- and Kamchadal-like Okhotsk culture of (northern) Hokkaido, with Satsumon being dominant.
•
Linguists believe the vocabulary shared between Ainu and Nivkh (historically spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing.
•
John C. Street (1962) proposed linking Ainu, Korean, and Japanese in one family and Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic in another, with the two families linked in a common "North Asiatic" family.
Languages of India | Indo-European languages | Celtic languages | Slavic languages | Algonquian languages | Turkic languages | Bantu languages | Romance languages | Berber languages | Australian Aboriginal languages | Germanic languages | Goidelic languages | Arawakan languages | North Germanic languages | Indigenous languages of the Americas | Austroasiatic languages | Indo-Aryan languages | Polynesian languages | Northwest Caucasian languages | Munda languages | Mongolic languages | French-based creole languages | Ainu people | Songhay languages | Semitic languages | Dené–Yeniseian languages | Common European Framework of Reference for Languages | Visayan languages | Tupian languages | Tibeto-Burman languages |