s and their sister areas of isolation, mountains,
are areas of survivals. The shrinking remnants of that half-dwarf
Negrito stock which may have formed the aboriginal population of
southern Asia are found to-day only in the mountains of peninsular
India and in island groups like the Andaman and the Philippines. But
even in the Philippines, they are confined either to the mountainous
interiors of the larger islands, or to little coastal islets like
Polillo, Alabat, Jomalig, and others.[918] [See map page 147.] Yezo,
Sakhalin and the Kurile Isles harbor the last feeble remnants of the
Ainos, a primitive people who formerly occupied a long stretch of the
Asiatic coast south of the Amur mouth. The protected environment of
these islands has postponed the doom of extinction toward which the
Ainos are hastening.[919] With insular conservatism they dress, live and
seek their food on the sea to-day, just as depicted in Japanese art and
literature at the dawn of history.[920] [See map page 103.]

[Sidenote: Insular survivals of manners and customs.]

It is chiefly on islands of harsh climatic conditions, like Sakhalin, or
of peculiarly restricted resources and area, like the Andaman, or of
remote, side-tracked location, like Iceland, Sardinia and Cape Breton,
that the stamp of the primitive or antiquated is strongest. Even when
not apparent in race stock, owing to the ubiquitous colonization of
maritime peoples, it marks the language and customs of even these
late-coming occupants, because an island environment asserts always some
power to isolate. This is due not only to the encircling moat of sea,
but also to the restricted insular area, too small to attract to itself
the great currents of human activity which infuse cosmopolitan ideas and
innovations, and too poor to buy the material improvements which
progress offers. If the tourist in Sicily finds the women of Taormina or
Girgenti spinning with a hand spindle, and the express trains moving
only twelve miles an hour, he can take these two facts as the product of
a small, detached area, although this island lies at the crossroads of
the Mediterranean. Corsica and Sardinia, lying off the main routes of
travel in this basin, are two of the most primitive and isolated spots
of Europe. Here the old wooden plow of Roman days is still in common use
as it is in Crete, and feudal institutions of the Middle Ages still
prevail to some extent[921],--a fact which recalls the long survival