zompist bboard

The idea is that the island-hoppers exist at about the same time as the landlubbers (this is the most ridiculous term I have every seen used to describe prehistoric people), just taking another route. Also, I think the island hoppers could also be Beringian coast-hoppers, while other people took a more inland route on Beringia. The region of Beringia was pretty huge during the time period.

Frislander wrote:I'm not saying that there was no migration direct from Beringia, just that not all of the migrating groups need have come via that route specifically at the time. migrants along such a route would also probably have been very similar to the inhabitants of Beringia genetically as well, as there would have been little divergence between the two groups given the time frame.

(I kinda said this in my earlier post, but you might've hit "Reply" before I edited it so you might not've seen it.)

The genetic data, though, don't say "Isolation from Asia, initial splintering into 2 groups, then subsequent splintering into many groups." It says there was a single, interbreeding population that persisted for several thousand years. I have no idea how well genetic studies of these kind can distinguish between one group and two groups like this, but since they're the experts and they say there was only one interbreeding population I will trust them and assume there was indeed one group-- this isn't consistent with two parallel groups, one getting held up in Beringia and the other staying in Kamchatka to later island hop over.

Also, presumably the second population would leave some people behind in Kamchatka, who would later interbreed with other Siberian populations. This, too, is inconsistent with a genetic separation from Asia occurring prior to the last glacial maximum.

methru wrote:The idea is that the island-hoppers exist at about the same time as the landlubbers, just taking another route.

Same answer.

Since this is somewhat related to the topic, I figured I'd post in this thread about this. I was reading about the Pericú who lived in southern Baja California in Mexico and how they had more advanced seafaring technology than their neighbouring tribes and spoke a language isolate. Apparently both the Pericú and Haida cultures were "warrior-like", had slaves, etc. and hunted deer, which is of course common in places where deer exist, but the Pericúes wore deer heads and the Haida wore/wear headdresses with animal heads. None of those are evidence of any kind of relation or anything, but I thought it was interesting.

Well, for that matter, there are creatures in Ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology that have (non-human ) animal heads but human bodies, the Hindu god Ganesha has an elephant's head but a human body, etc.

How about this:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... ing-strait

Vlürch wrote:Since this is somewhat related to the topic, I figured I'd post in this thread about this. I was reading about the Pericú who lived in southern Baja California in Mexico and how they had more advanced seafaring technology than their neighbouring tribes and spoke a language isolate. Apparently both the Pericú and Haida cultures were "warrior-like", had slaves, etc. and hunted deer, which is of course common in places where deer exist, but the Pericúes wore deer heads and the Haida wore/wear headdresses with animal heads. None of those are evidence of any kind of relation or anything, but I thought it was interesting.

Zoomorphic headdresses and masks are common throughout the Northwest, reaching their pinnacle in Tsimshian transformation masks, which were traded throughout the region. The Tlingit also wore bear heads according to Russian explorers, probably as clan insignia. The slave trade in the Northwest was complicated; most slaves were taken by the Haida and the Kwakwaka'wakw, but the Tlingit were both the major buyers and distributors. At least among the Tlingit, the Washington tribes were the most desirable. Anyway, if anything the Pericú may share some resemblance with the PNW culture, but none of those things (except speaking a language isolate and possessing advanced seafaring technology) are unique to the Haida--and inhabiting an archipelago, one would think the Haida would be advanced seamen compared to their shore dwelling counterparts who rarely made oceanic voyages--except for the whale-hunting Makah and Nuu-chah-nuulth, of course.

Frislander wrote:How about this:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... ing-strait

Quite interesting, and not too far from where I live.

I know this is a pretty big necrobump, but I just came across this long, long thing that's extremely relevant to this thread and can't resist the temptation to post about it: http://anthropogenesis.kinshipstudies.o ... igins-wip/

Since it's so huge, there's really no hope of reading it in its entirety (at least in one sitting, especially when tired (I'm always tired...)) but there's some interesting stuff about the Haida and other Native Americans. I'll quote a few paragraphs that stuck out:

Ethnographic studies also emphasize the minor role of language (and thus tribe) in population relationships on the Northwest Coast. Instead, socioeconomic organization was more important for what were essentially interactions on the village level. Clans included speakers of different languages and dialects (p. 433).

If one branch of a language group is in contact with an unrelated group, it is likely to change faster than its sister languages and in a different direction. It may thus appear by glottochronology to have diverged from its sisters at an earlier date than is actually correct. Renewed contact between branches of the same group can result in borrowings that will make the branches appear to have diverged more recently than is really the case. Extreme contact situations such as those which result in the formation of a pidgin can throw off the results of glottochronology entirely and may even create a false bridge between two unrelated language stocks. An application of glottochronology to English and the English-based pidgin of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, gives a separation date of something like 2,000 B.P., but Tok Pisin has not existed a tenth of that time. Moreover, the fact that Tok Pisin contains words from Malay and Tolai as well as English might convince a scholar from the future that these stocks were closely connected (p. 491).

The pairwise comparison of sequences from Native Americans and Mongolians sheds some light on the debate over the number and diversity of migrant populations. The data indicate that Mongolian and Native American populations, including the Haida, have not been isolated from one another for a sufficiently long period of time to generate the mutations needed to result in a leading intermatch distribution. These intermatch distributions resemble the distribution generated when two populations diverge and then expand at approximately the same time (Harpending et al. 1993). p. 1167

The AMOVA analysis between the Haida and other North American populations also does not indicate that the Haida are significantly different from other Native Americans. These data thus suggest that the ancestors of the Haida were included in the initial colonization of the Americas and not the product of a later separate migration from Asia. p. 1167

The Bering Sea was never as formidable a barrier as the expanse of glacial Ice that accompanies the return of the Land Bridge. The oscillating levels of the ocean during and following Glacial events has a similar impact in shifting the distances between Islands and Continents. This has a similar impact in isolating populations from mainland populations as was the case for the original inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia

After googling some relevant terms since my interest in this topic is rising again, I also found this thing written by an Estonian, which I didn't read much of yet but seems relevant (even if possibly pretty crackpotty): http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/uini-altaskinboats.html
...apparently, everyone hates this guy with a passion. I'd never heard of him before, but googling him comes up with almost nothing except people negatively calling him an Uralic nationalist, pseudoscientist, etc. Like I said, though, I didn't read much so it could well be that he really is like that (not that being a nationalist is bad, but that's another topic...), but based on what little I did read so far, it didn't really seem like that except that he decided to call the hypothetical ancient culture "Atlantians" and is really trying to hammer his ideas hard, which is kinda disappointing but at least he ends every other sentence with a question mark... and even if he is a total nut, it's still admirable how dedicated he is to writing about this stuff, and even a total nut could shed some light on mysteries by exploring possibilities that others don't consider.

Anyway, has there been any new research into anything? How is Haida currently doing? Is the revitalisation project looking successful?

Thanks for the info; it confirmed what I suspected. I'll look into it more deeply when I'm feeling better.

As far as the revitalization goes, last I heard Haida still had a dwindling elderly population of speakers who spoke a simplified form of the language (which Mithun notes is the usual sign of language death in polysynthetic languages).

As it happens, there's recently been a notable study of native american genetics.

The expected bits:
- the populations of america and the pacific northeast (chukchi, etc) all result from various mixtures of siberians with east asians
- almost all americans descend from a single (60% east asian, 40% siberian) population in Beringia
- the na-dene samples were american with a dash of asian (90-10). This doesn't seem surprising - while the na-dene have long been considered linguistically and culturally distinct, a later migration, most athabaskans have been known for a while to be pretty amerindian in genetics. This suggests a culturally-influential migration that gradually intermingled with the much-more-numerous natives
- greenlanders are 2/3rds Saqqaq (one of the pre-Inuit 'Eskimo' groups), and 1/3rd american. Again, it makes sense that the initial pre-eskimo invasion would mingle with the natives, and that the result would be the source of the second wave
- there was at one stage a relict population in Alaska, from which all the other americans split off (i.e. the people who stayed when the pioneers went south), but which has at some point been lost. Given the harsh conditions, multiple invasions from asia and possibly back-migration from further south, this isn't a surprise.
- the study splits americans into 'north' and 'south' as the primary split in the modern population. However, their "south american" consists of one Aymara sample and one from Montana. Nonetheless, other studies have repeatedly confirmed the basic north/south split - though more studies would be required to see how universal it was. The fact that the Clovis Culture sample from Montana patterns with south america seems to suggest it's not just a simple "inland north america vs coastal south america" split we're looking at, though.


But surprising:
- the Asian componant of na-dene isn't particularly closely related to the asian componant in Ket. The closest connection was to Koryak, then to Saqqaq, THEN to Ket. [the siberian admixture into Ket seems even more divergent from that into everything pacificky, so was probably later]. This may mean:
-- Dene-Yeneseian is wrong
-- The Ket have been genetically replaced by another siberian/asian mix in the same area but wih different ancestry, while keeping their language
-- The Na-Dene have been genetically replaced twice (first by a different asian group, and then by americans)
-- Not only are EA and CK related to DY, but they're actually internal to DY somehow
-- There was once a more widespread family comprising Dene-Yeneseian and the former languages of the Koryak and Saqqaq, but the latter groups adopted the languages of CK and EA groups later on.

Impossible to say at this stage which it is, I think.

Salmoneus wrote:- the na-dene samples were american with a dash of asian (90-10). This doesn't seem surprising - while the na-dene have long been considered linguistically and culturally distinct, a later migration, most athabaskans have been known for a while to be pretty amerindian in genetics. This suggests a culturally-influential migration that gradually intermingled with the much-more-numerous natives

Even such a small mixture, though, helps explain why Na-Dene are frequently mistaken for Koreans (and vice versa). Well, that and people are stupid. (I once had a Vietnamese classmate who the entire rest of the class thought was Mexican. I was sort of astonished.)

But surprising:
- the Asian componant of na-dene isn't particularly closely related to the asian componant in Ket. The closest connection was to Koryak, then to Saqqaq, THEN to Ket. [the siberian admixture into Ket seems even more divergent from that into everything pacificky, so was probably later]. This may mean:
-- Dene-Yeneseian is wrong
-- The Ket have been genetically replaced by another siberian/asian mix in the same area but wih different ancestry, while keeping their language
-- The Na-Dene have been genetically replaced twice (first by a different asian group, and then by americans)
-- Not only are EA and CK related to DY, but they're actually internal to DY somehow
-- There was once a more widespread family comprising Dene-Yeneseian and the former languages of the Koryak and Saqqaq, but the latter groups adopted the languages of CK and EA groups later on.

Impossible to say at this stage which it is, I think.

That raises some disappointing but at the same time intriguing questions about Dene-Yeniseian. A genetic relationship as well as linguistic one would have been more exciting, but still, a lack of genetic relationship doesn't disprove a linguistic one. I look forward to more development on that front.

Zaarin wrote:I once had a Vietnamese classmate who the entire rest of the class thought was Mexican. I was sort of astonished.

My brother was mistaken for Mexican in high school, too.

Zaarin wrote:That raises some disappointing but at the same time intriguing questions about Dene-Yeniseian. A genetic relationship as well as linguistic one would have been more exciting, but still, a lack of genetic relationship doesn't disprove a linguistic one. I look forward to more development on that front.

I would definitely agree, I wouldn't rely on the genetics as the main evidence of a possible connection, because if a linguistic connection is proven (and I myself do hold out some hope that it might be, frankly I find it more convincing than Nilo-Saharan at this point) then the genetics is frankly irrelevant.

Vijay wrote:

Zaarin wrote:I once had a Vietnamese classmate who the entire rest of the class thought was Mexican. I was sort of astonished.

My brother was mistaken for Mexican in high school, too.

A lot of Americans seem to have a bad habit of thinking anyone with black hair and a skintone between white and black is Mexican. :/

Xephyr wrote:

zompist wrote:Honestly I don't know much about reindeer herding, but for discussing language group expansion, the question is whether it allows empires, as horse nomadism does.

I don't know much about horse nomadism, but isn't it the prevailing theory nowadays that the Indo-European expansion was driven more by domestication of sheeps/goats and less by marauding charioteers? See also: the famously nonexistent rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops.

Maybe not rhino-mounted, but Bantu did completely replace the populations of some areas...

Chengjiang wrote:As far as I know, Damin appears to be an exceptional case of a ritual language having a dramatically different phonology from the speakers' primary language, or indeed from any other languages the speakers were traditionally familiar with.

Damin's phonological quirks probably came from lexicalization of vocalizations associated with a sign language.

The notion of PIE speakers being Mongol-like nomadic steppe horsemen is a strawman the proponents of the Anatolian hypothesis and of Paleolithic Continuity like to whack. Nobody believes in this anymore.

WeepingElf wrote:The notion of PIE speakers being Mongol-like nomadic steppe horsemen is a strawman the proponents of the Anatolian hypothesis and of Paleolithic Continuity like to whack. Nobody believes in this anymore.

The last hypothesis for PIE expansion that I heard...

OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up), but the one before that said PIE speakers domesticated the horse.

It is indeed quite likely that the speakers of PIE were the ones who domesticated the horse which gave them a military advantage over their neighbours, but domesticated horses do not make them Mongol-like nomads. There are plenty of cultures who have domesticated horses and are nothing like Mongols.

Archaeologists say that at least in the western half of the area where PIE was spoken (which is famously suited to agriculture), people were sedentary agriculturalists who cultivated both crops and animals, and the reconstructible PIE vocabulary confirms this. There are terms for crops, farm implements, and architectural terms that probably referred to more permanent structures than tents or yurts.

Nortaneous wrote:OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up)

Let me guess it goes something like this:

"Hey, look at these Pre-IE languages we know of, Basque and Etruscan, they're so harsh sounding they must be terrible for writing poetry, because as well all know everyone loves poetry! Now look at Latin and Greek, they're so poetic don't you think? Thus the IE languages spread because people were desperate to use their sonorous and flowing sounds to use for their poetic free expression!"

Nortaneous wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:The notion of PIE speakers being Mongol-like nomadic steppe horsemen is a strawman the proponents of the Anatolian hypothesis and of Paleolithic Continuity like to whack. Nobody believes in this anymore.

The last hypothesis for PIE expansion that I heard...

OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up), but the one before that said PIE speakers domesticated the horse.

So did English take over the world because of Shakespeare and Milton?

Zaarin wrote:

Nortaneous wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:The notion of PIE speakers being Mongol-like nomadic steppe horsemen is a strawman the proponents of the Anatolian hypothesis and of Paleolithic Continuity like to whack. Nobody believes in this anymore.

The last hypothesis for PIE expansion that I heard...

OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up), but the one before that said PIE speakers domesticated the horse.

So did English take over the world because of Shakespeare and Milton?

If you went to a bookstore in my parents' hometown, you might think so, lol. That's pretty much all it would have.

Vijay wrote:

Zaarin wrote:

Nortaneous wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:The notion of PIE speakers being Mongol-like nomadic steppe horsemen is a strawman the proponents of the Anatolian hypothesis and of Paleolithic Continuity like to whack. Nobody believes in this anymore.

The last hypothesis for PIE expansion that I heard...

OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up), but the one before that said PIE speakers domesticated the horse.

So did English take over the world because of Shakespeare and Milton?

If you went to a bookstore in my parents' hometown, you might think so, lol. That's pretty much all it would have.

I'm a lit major, so that sounds like a great bookstore to me.

Frislander wrote:

Nortaneous wrote:OK, the last one I heard was just that everyone really liked their poetry (I am not making this up)

Let me guess it goes something like this:

"Hey, look at these Pre-IE languages we know of, Basque and Etruscan, they're so harsh sounding they must be terrible for writing poetry, because as well all know everyone loves poetry! Now look at Latin and Greek, they're so poetic don't you think? Thus the IE languages spread because people were desperate to use their sonorous and flowing sounds to use for their poetic free expression!"

"Hey, look at all this early Indo-European poetry! There must be some explanation for Indo-European expansion, and we know that it can't have involved population expansion and certainly can't have involved military conquest because that would be fascist. So it was poetry that did it."

An ancient fragment of PIE poetry has been found in a cave high in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. It reads as follows:

H₂óu̯is h₁éḱu̯ōskʷe

h₂áu̯ei̯ h₁i̯osméi̯ h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁ést, só h₁éḱu̯oms derḱt. só gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óǵʰom u̯eǵʰed; só méǵh₂m̥ bʰórom; só dʰǵʰémonm̥ h₂ṓḱu bʰered. h₂óu̯is h₁ékʷoi̯bʰi̯os u̯eu̯ked: “dʰǵʰémonm̥ spéḱi̯oh₂ h₁éḱu̯oms-kʷe h₂áǵeti, ḱḗr moi̯ agʰnutor”. h₁éḱu̯ōs tu u̯eu̯kond: “ḱludʰí, h₂ou̯ei̯! tód spéḱi̯omes, n̥sméi̯ agʰnutór ḱḗr: dʰǵʰémō, pótis, sē h₂áu̯i̯es h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ gʷʰérmom u̯éstrom u̯ept, h₂áu̯ibʰi̯os tu h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁esti." tód ḱeḱluu̯ṓs h₂óu̯is h₂aǵróm bʰuged.

How could we resist?

Zaarin wrote:I'm a lit major, so that sounds like a great bookstore to me.

It is, until you're ready to place your order, and the guy at the counter doesn't really speak English...

Salmoneus wrote:- the Asian componant of na-dene isn't particularly closely related to the asian componant in Ket. The closest connection was to Koryak, then to Saqqaq, THEN to Ket. [the siberian admixture into Ket seems even more divergent from that into everything pacificky, so was probably later]. This may mean:
-- Dene-Yeneseian is wrong
-- The Ket have been genetically replaced by another siberian/asian mix in the same area but wih different ancestry, while keeping their language
-- The Na-Dene have been genetically replaced twice (first by a different asian group, and then by americans)
-- Not only are EA and CK related to DY, but they're actually internal to DY somehow
-- There was once a more widespread family comprising Dene-Yeneseian and the former languages of the Koryak and Saqqaq, but the latter groups adopted the languages of CK and EA groups later on.

I'm placing my bets on #2 (some degree of language shift in connection with the spread of Yeniseian) and #5 (CK and EA originally spreading to the north through language shift); they match well enough with what's known of the spread of other language groups in northern Eurasia. Samic first spreads to the north by language shift, Finnic first spreads to the north by language shift, Ob-Ugric spreads to the north (comes about as it is currently) by language shift, Samoyedic spreads to the north (comes about as it is currently) by language shift…

#3 is probably not ruled out either, but it doesn't seem to have much advantages compared to #5. #1 is obviously the wrong inference here (the lack of a strong unique genetic connection does jack shit to disprove Sami being related to Estonian or Turkish being related to Yakut), though it could be still wrong for other reasons; #4 is obviously wrong, period.