Some 19th- and 20th-century anthropologists believed that the
korpokkur were a "race that predated the Ainu".
Arnold Henry Savage Landor proposed a theory about the indigenous people of
Hokkaido, which suggested that the Ainu, migrating from the north, overtook and displaced an earlier population known as the Koro-pok-kuru. He believed the Koro-pok-kuru shared similarities with the
Eskaleut speakers and may have arrived in Yezo from the
Aleutian Islands. Allen P. McCartney equated the
Okhotsk culture with the
Korpokkur. Early ethnographer (1863-1913) believed Korpokkur legends pointed to a previous population that the Ainu displaced or even eradicated. These conclusions mostly come from misinterpretations of Hokkaido
Jōmon artifacts (such as pottery, tools, and arrowheads), which were understudied at the time and markedly different from what contemporaneous Ainu used.
Alexander Akulov refuted early anthropologists, stating that the pit-dwellings supposedly associated with the pre-Ainu aboriginal people were also built by the Ainu themselves in the
Kuril Islands and
Sakhalin, an argument also used by
John Batchelor. Based on the evidence presented, Akulov concludes that the Koropok-Guru legend is nothing more than a story. It does not signify a mysterious pre-Ainu race, but rather reflects a traditional Ainu dwelling practice that predates significant Japanese influence. He cites Pozdneyev, arguing that the legend "was spread there where Ainu were already more or less japanized", quoting:Further northward the legend has terminated, in the northern Kuril Islands there nobody knows anything about it, and Ainu of Northern Kurils not only tell that the islands were not inhabited by someone else but insisted that they had lived in these islands since very deep antiquity. Being interrogated about the remains of the Stone Age they confidently responded that these remains belong to their ancestors.In his
Ainu–English
–Japanese Dictionary, John Batchelor says that certain pit-dwellings associated with the
korpokkur were called "
Koropok-un-guru koro chisei kot" or "
Toi chisei kotcha utara kot chisei kot", respectively meaning "sites belonging to people who dwelt below ground" and "house sites of people who had earth houses." He arguments that the original meaning of
Koropok-guru was not "people of the Petasites plant", since
Koropok can only be translated as “under, beneath, below.” The full name would be
Koropok-un-guru, “people dwelling below,”
un being a locative particle, which doesn't carry the idea of dwarves or little people. He further argues that, even if "Koropok-guru" literally meant "people under the Petasites" plant, it wouldn't imply dwarfish stature. Batchelor himself, standing nearly 5 ft. 8 in., could comfortably walk and even ride a pony amongst the Petasites leaves. He found it humorous to imagine how tall the people who named the pit-dwellers "dwarves" must have been if they considered movement beneath the plant indicative of short stature. == See also ==