What's implied in my phylogenetic tree is that the traditional, highly interactive, musical style brought out of Africa by HMP (the "Hypothetical Migrant Population") could have been seriously disrupted due to some major population bottlenecks produced by a serious and wide-ranging disaster, centered roughly in South Asia, at a time when relatively small colonies of migrants would have been spread out over much of the Indian Ocean coast. Such an event could account for at least some of the major discontinuities we see when we examine the traditional musical styles of so many societies in various parts of the world today. My tree focuses on three distinctive proto-styles, B1, B2 and B3, that could have emerged from such an event, but there could have been some others as well -- my phylogeny may well be far from complete.
To understand how the distinctive, and actually quite remarkable "unison/ iterative/ one-beat" style of the Australian Aboriginals could have originated, we need to look first at its predecessor: B3. B3, or "Social Unison" can be seen as prototypical for a great many musical sub-styles now found largely in Oceania (including Australia), with possible relatives in Eastern and Southern Europe, and an important branch in the Americas. We can hypothesize either that B3 originated among a single, very small, group of disaster survivors probably living somewhere to the east of India, and then spread to other regions of Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas as the descendants of this population expanded in all directions over thousands of years; or, and probably more likely, that various versions of B3 arose more or less simultaneously among different groups living in roughly the same area, and spread in various directions as the descendants of those groups expanded.
What all such cases would have had in common would have been a serious disruption of social life resulting from the disaster. Since P/B is so dependent on the close and even intimate interaction of all participants, it's not difficult to see how such a style could have vanished in the face of serious adversity of a sort that could have pitted formerly cooperative families and individuals against one another in a desperate struggle for survival. After the dust cleared, and social life began to return to normality, efforts to revive ancestral traditions may well have been hampered by the disruption of the normal process of cultural transmission from one generation to the next. So it's not difficult to see how simpler musical traditions, such as the various versions of B3, could have emerged.
Among some groups, interlocked polyphonic vocalizing may have given way to simple leader-chorus alternation or, among others, social unison -- in some cases with the retention of polyphony in the form of parallel harmonies or drone effects, while in other cases the newly emergent society may have completely lost its ability to sing in harmony -- or alternatively, dismissed the harmonizing of neighboring groups as a crudely "primitive" practice to be avoided at all costs in favor of a more carefully controlled and constrained approach to solo singing, and/or the development of precisely synchronized unison vocalizing. (It's important to recognize that among many such groups unison is not merely due to an inability to harmonize, but that even incidental harmonizations are seen as mistakes to be avoided.)
It is on such a basis that we can see Australian Aboriginal style (B3a2), and it's close relatives in New Guinea and Island Melanesia, emerging. Not necessarily as a direct result of the same bottleneck that would appear to have produced the "Australoid" morphology, but as a development from it, i.e., as a development from the proto-style I've called B3. Since we do not currently find B3a2 among any South Asian tribal groups or, indeed, any musical traditions now known between India and East Indonesia (to the best of my knowledge), it's tempting to assume that B3a2 may have originated in the Sahul itself, possibly due to the population bottleneck that would have occurred when the first wave of Australoid males invaded, thousands of years after the initial "Negrito" settlement of that continent.
There is a problem with that scenario, however, due to the fact that B3a2 has a "sister" clade, B3a1, which turns out to be the dominant musical style for almost all of native North America, and much of Central and South America as well. The two substyles can sound very similar, especially when Australian Aboriginal singing is compared with Plains Indian singing, an especially close match in melodic type along with everything else. The principal difference is that Australians tend to emphasize relatively narrow intervals in their melodies, whereas Amerindians prefer wide intervals, such as thirds, fourths and fifths. Harsh, tense-voiced unison singing, with frequent iteration of the same note, accompanied by a single, repeated beat on either drums or rattles (Indians) or percussion sticks (Australians) tends to be the rule in both traditions. There are important differences as well, especially since drums of any kind appear to be unknown in Australia, while extremely important in the Americas. And there is no equivalent of the Didgeridoo in the Americas.
Do both traditions stem from a common root? Or are the many resemblances coincidental? If they do in fact stem from a common root, which seems likely, then it's necessary to place the origin of this style early enough to account for what would have to have been a very early divergence between the ancestors of the two groups, which are, of course (and this adds to the problematic aspect of this association), very different morphologically. Genetically, however, there does seem to be a link, since the Y chromosome C haplogroup is in fact found in all the Asiatic/Oceanic B3 groups in my musical tree. And, as German Dziebel has recently reminded me, a Cantometric factor analysis done by Alan Lomax back in 1980 united many Amerindian groups with Australian Aboriginals as part of what he termed a Circum-Pacific family. According to Lomax, "In East and Southeast Asia the rise of high Chinese, Indo-Chinese, Malaysian and Polynesian high culture obscures a tradition that seems to have once stretched uninterruptedly from Siberia south to Australia. The Circum-Pacific model still shapes the performances of aboriginal Australia, much of Melanesia and parts of backwoods Malaysia . . . ("Factors of Musical Style," in Theory and Practice: Essays Presented to Gene Weltfish, ed. S. Diamond, p. 37). If Lomax is right, then North America and Australia could be regarded as enormous refuge areas, populated during a period when more advanced Neolithic societies were beginning to expand, pushing their hunter-gatherer neighbors increasingly into peripheral areas.
"(It's important to recognize that among many such groups unison is not merely due to an inability to harmonize, but that even incidental harmonizations are seen as mistakes to be avoided.)"
ReplyDeleteIn some cultures in Asia, Oceania and America, men and women vocalize in sharply different ways such as unison vs. harmonic (e.g., "the majority of the Shipibo men's songs were monotonous, though those of the women were more harmonious and varied" [Wistrand, Amazonian music and song texts, Ethnomusicology, 1969, vol. 13, no. 3, 474), hence the transgression from a male song style to female may be considered effeminate and therefore inappropriate.
"If Lomax is right, then North America and Australia could be regarded as enormous refuge areas, populated during a period when more advanced Neolithic societies were beginning to expand, pushing their hunter-gatherer neighbors increasingly into peripheral areas."
ReplyDeleteThis is consistent with paleobiological research that doesn't report Mongoloid features in Paleoindian skulls from North or South America, but rather describes them as pre-Mongoloid, or "undifferentiated" with affinities to Australoid, Melanesian, Polynesian and Ainu skulls.
"Genetically, however, there does seem to be a link, since the Y chromosome C haplogroup is in fact found in all the Asiatic/Oceanic B3 groups in my musical tree."
ReplyDeleteOn the mtDNA side of things, dominant Australian S lineages are part of macrohaplogroup N. In the Americas, N is represented by haplogroups A, X and B. A is much more frequent in North America than in central or South America and X is only found in North America. Notably, in Siberia X and B are virtually unknown and A is rare. Na-Dene Indians have haplogroup X (attested only in Southern Athabascans), while their distant Ket relatives in Siberia have another archaic N lineage, missing from other Siberian populations. It's possible, therefore, that the depletion of N lineages in Siberia correlates with the loss of unison one-beat iterative musical style.
mtDNA haplogroup B is more of a problem (it's very common in western South America) but it's possible that Polynesian unison can be correlated with the strong presence of haplogroup B in Polynesia.
German: "This is consistent with paleobiological research that doesn't report Mongoloid features in Paleoindian skulls from North or South America, but rather describes them as pre-Mongoloid, or "undifferentiated" with affinities to Australoid, Melanesian, Polynesian and Ainu skulls."
ReplyDeleteYes, that's true, and it's interesting, but as I see things, it doesn't apply to the distribution of B3a1 (unison/ iterative/ one-beat style) which appears to have been a relatively late arrival in the New World. And it seems to be associated with groups that do indeed have a (roughly) "mongoloid" morphology.
In my view, the Paleo-Indians may well have been an extension from the original Out of Africa migration, and would therefore have been maintaining certain elements of African culture, including hocketing wind ensembles (trumpets, pipes and panpipes) and canonic-echoic vocal interaction. Relics of these people and this culture can be found in Central and South America, but not the north. Many look more like Melanesians than North Americans, and their culture is very different from that of N. America in certain ways. I feel sure that the skulls you refer to must be remnants of these people, not the folks who arrived later, in the wake of the thaw following the LGM.
German: "mtDNA haplogroup B is more of a problem (it's very common in western South America) but it's possible that Polynesian unison can be correlated with the strong presence of haplogroup B in Polynesia."
ReplyDeleteIf you look closely at my phylogenetic tree, you'll see that Polynesia is largely B3b and B3b1, which are both polyphonic styles. B3 has two branches, one unison and the other polyphonic, and the Polynesians seem to have developed from people who had retained polyphonic vocal traditions from HMC, though largely in a social unison setting, having lost much if not all of the more interactive traditions. (Though certain types of missionary influenced "himene" singing may represent a survival of an older HMC-based musical style.)
Interestingly, the polyphonic vocal traditions of Western Polynesia appear to have been lost in much of Eastern Polynesia. Hawaiian and Maori chant is essentially unison or solo. The loss is almost certainly due to one of the many population bottlenecks involved in the settlement of these islands, and probably stems from one of the earlier voyages to the Eastern Pacific.
"B3a1 (unison/ iterative/ one-beat style) which appears to have been a relatively late arrival in the New World. And it seems to be associated with groups that do indeed have a (roughly) "mongoloid" morphology.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, the Paleo-Indians may well have been an extension from the original Out of Africa migration, and would therefore have been maintaining certain elements of African culture..."
Yes, the theory of two migrations into the Americas based on the observed differences between Paleoindian and historical Native American skull morphology has some currency in the academic circles. The problem with this interpretation is that mtDNA extracted from those Paleoindian skulls that show pre-Mongoloid features has so far fallen into the haplotypes described from modern populations. Hence, it appears that the morphology has undergone changes in the general "Mongoloid" direction independently in America and in Asia, with some modern Amerindian populations such as Fuegians and Baja Californians preserving some of the robust features from the original makeup. Hence, some of the pronounced differences between Amerindian and Asian skulls that never fit nicely into theories of recent (within past 12K) migration from Asia to America.
This makes the single wave theory of the origin of American Indians by far the best theory out there now.
"Interestingly, the polyphonic vocal traditions of Western Polynesia appear to have been lost in much of Eastern Polynesia. Hawaiian and Maori chant is essentially unison or solo. The loss is almost certainly due to one of the many population bottlenecks involved in the settlement of these islands, and probably stems from one of the earlier voyages to the Eastern Pacific."
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good data point, Victor. And it definitely makes sense in the light of my earlier comment on the striking similarities between Austronesian and Papuan kinship systems that can't be explained by admixture, substratum or diffusion. These similarities, in fact, go back to some of the most ancient features of human kinship systems, and these features are indeed also found among Africans (especially, Niger-Congo).
German: "The problem with this interpretation is that mtDNA extracted from those Paleoindian skulls that show pre-Mongoloid features has so far fallen into the haplotypes described from modern populations."
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that the model for the population of the Americas that makes the most sense to me -- also based on Stephen Oppenheimer's book -- is inconsistent in some ways with the genetic findings thus far. I'm hoping the discrepancies will be cleared up as larger samplings from some of the more remote groups become available.
German: "This makes the single wave theory of the origin of American Indians by far the best theory out there now."
If you say so . . .
German: "This makes the single wave theory of the origin of American Indians by far the best theory out there now."
ReplyDeleteThe single wave theory doesn't work because it fails to explain the complexity of the Amerindian picture today (and by "today" I mean early 20th century, when the most intense research began, to present). Since the great majority of studies were concentrated almost exclusively in N. and Central America, the very different nature of the South American picture has not been fully taken into account. Here is where the musical evidence ought to be front and center, because the differences between south and north are huge. And as you yourself have pointed out there are also huge differences linguistically between North and South, with a degree of diversity in the south rivaling that of New Guinea. It seems clear to me that there must have been an earlier migration into America prior to the migration(s) that resulted in the majority of N. American cultures, and that this early migration must have preceded the LGM. This is Oppenheimer's view and his explanation is convincing and also quite elegant.
It accounts for the presence of some of the older archaeological evidence that you've pointed to (pre-Clovis) and also the unusually high degree of linguistic diversity in S. America, which can be accounted for if we infer that the oldest of these language families must have diverged from one another in the Americas at least 20,000 years ago and possibly even 40,000 years ago.
German: "This is a very good data point, Victor. And it definitely makes sense in the light of my earlier comment on the striking similarities between Austronesian and Papuan kinship systems that can't be explained by admixture, substratum or diffusion. These similarities, in fact, go back to some of the most ancient features of human kinship systems, and these features are indeed also found among Africans (especially, Niger-Congo)."
ReplyDeleteThough we disagree on the question of whether modern humans originated in Africa or America, there is no disagreement regarding the potential significance of the kinship data, nor is there disagreement regarding the potential value of your own research in this area. My problem is that your book is too technical (and also, to be frank, too cluttered with detail) to be of much use to a non-specialist such as myself, and also the vast majority of today's anthropologists I'd imagine, many of whom have probably never spent much time at all on kinship, in contrast to their predecessors who probably spent too much time on this topic.
A comprehensive treatment by you, of kinship patterns and distributions worldwide, geared toward the non-specialist, would be a very welcome contribution that could have lasting significance. But it will have only very limited impact if it is attached, in ANY way, to ANY sort of theory, and especially to a theory so unlikely to find acceptance as your Out of America theory. And I would tell you this even if I agreed with you on that score.
A theory-neutral treatment of kinship by you, either in book form, or blog form, or as an extended essay, written in laymen's terms, would be greeted with enthusiasm by me and I'm sure many younger anthropologists who might be wondering why no one is talking much about kinship any more these days.
"The single wave theory doesn't work because it fails to explain the complexity of the Amerindian picture today (and by "today" I mean early 20th century, when the most intense research began, to present)."
ReplyDeleteLet me correct myself a bit: a single-wave model of Amerindian origins is by far the most dominant interpretation of genetic data for Y-DNA and mtDNA. All major studies concur on this, citing the coalescence dates for all the clades and the rather uniform distribution across the Americas. Classical markers gave the same picture.
I'm willing to consider an alternative explanation such as a two-wave model that you espouse. I do indeed see a rather sharp contrast between North and South America in the levels of linguistic diversity, the distribution of mythological motifs (pace Berezkin), your musical evidence and some aspects of my kinship evidence. I do see that mtDNA lineages belonging to macrohaplogroups M and N and Y-DNA lineages belonging to macrohaplogroups F and C seem to be geographically structured along the same lines of South vs. North America, hence technically one could imagine an older population hidden away in the south from 40k on and a new population coming in from the north and penetrating wide and deep into the southern areas.
And you're right: admixture between two populations can always explain the observed diversities and divergencies. You know this from the predictions of the Multiregional model in the Old World.
But then if we go into a greater detail things fall apart. Macrohaplogroup N is supposed to represent the latest migration but then it's very uncommon in Siberia (no X, no B, little A). A more recent migration should have very discernible traces in Siberia. But the observed situation is the opposite from our theory. Plus the Amerindian lineages from macrohaplogroup M are very frequent in North America and in Circumarctic populations (same for Y-DNA Q, which, in both basal and derived forms, is found from Tierra del Fuego to the Eskimos). So we have to conclude that either members of both macrohaplogroups were brought to America both times, which pretty much amounts to a version of a single-wave model, or that members of macrohaplogroup M expanded northward at the same time as the members of macrohaplogroup N expanded southward.
If macrohaplogroup N was brought into North America at 12,000K with the Clovis technology, which again shows some signals of intrusion into South America, then we would see a nice archaeological pattern of dates from Northeast Asia to Alaska to North America south of the ice shield. But we don't have it. In fact, the dates for Clovis artifacts become younger as one goes north from the southern areas of North America.
Finally, linguistically there's no region in Siberia that could account for even half of Amerindian linguistic diversity. Typologically, there's no contrast between North American and Soth American languages and the former are not more similar to Siberian languages than the latter. In fact, the most pronounced typological cline in the Americas is from east to west in both North and South America. If a later contribution to the Americas was negligible in linguistic terms, then we may end up not needing this second migration in the first place.
Continued:
ReplyDeleteIf your Australian-North American musical link is significant, then we should consider the second migration to predate LGM by some 10K years (say, it occurred 20K ago). This is because Australia was isolated for quite some time and any similarities with Australia automatically deepen the chronology in the other region(s) as well. This, however, will have absolutely no correlates in molecular genetic studies.
Any older dates for the peopling of the Americas would fit linguistic and kinship data better, of course. But the problem here is that America is tied in clinal variation to Africa, and while you could conjure up some kind of scenario to explain the accrual of diversities in the Americas, how would you explain their loss in Africa? My explanation simply follows Occam's Razor. An early migration(s) out of the Americas plus subsequent re-expansions within the Americas that produced clinal differences between North and South. Yes, Victor, old-timer Occam has defected from you and is now on my side.
"But it will have only very limited impact if it is attached, in ANY way, to ANY sort of theory..."
ReplyDeleteThank you for your suggestion, Victor (I refer to the whole paragraph), but I don't think simplifying the book and stripping it off the out of America theory would/would've attracted more people to it. I've been consulting young students on kinship matters for many years (both in Russia and in the U.S.), and I haven't heard any complaints about my out of America theory being part of my 2001 Russian-language book and the 2007 English-language book. Most people simply mind their business and don't care about human origins and the directionality of migrations. The founder of kinship studies, Lewis H. Morgan, also presented his kinship system phylogenies (Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, 1871) in conjunction with a theory of Asian origins of Amerindians. Later, it turned out that the markers he was using are not useful for any studies of prehistory. So, people threw out his use of kinship systems to explain the origin of Amerindians but used exhaustively the rest of his monumental book.
So if there was an interest in kinship, people would've swallowed my book without any problem. However, neither kinship studies, not human origins are popular topics in anthropology. Whether I keep them separate or combine in one book won't move the needle. The other problem is that scholars in the field of human origins and dispersals are very specialized and very speculative (the legacy of century-long meditations on skulls and lithics), and it's almost impossible to find a thinker who would be well-rounded in a set of key disciplines, have a critical spirit in him and a desire to learn more and make a difference. Hence, I decided (and believe me it was a conscious choice) to write the book the way I see fit, without much concern for what the small group of hyperspecialized authors of speculative theories of human dispersals might think about it.
This said, the book could have been written better, I admit.
As far as the technical details go, yours is a fair critique, but the connection between Austronesian-Papuan-Amerindian-Sub-Saharan kinship systems (the sibling terminology component) is the easiest one to follow in my book. And it's the core of the phylogenetic tree I constructed. For some reason, Amerindians seem to have the ancestral type at high frequencies, Papuans have it at lower frequencies, while Austronesians and Sub-Saharan Africans have only the derived types at high-frequencies.
For some reason, one of my comments (the one that belongs before the one that starts with "continued") didn't post. I'll try to recreate it again.
ReplyDelete"The single wave theory doesn't work because it fails to explain the complexity of the Amerindian picture today..."
Let me correct myself a bit. A single-wave theory of Amerindian origins is supported by the vast majority of genetic labs out there. This concerns both Y-DNA and mtDNA. Classical markers seem to be consistent with it, too. Since Merriwether et al. 1995, geneticists cite the even distribution of mtDNA lineages across the Americas and the approximately equal coalescent dates for each of them. It seems unlikely that the two migrant populations separated by thousands of years would pick up exactly the same lineages in Asia. The regional differences within the Americas are explained as results of local re-expansions that postdate the original settlement of the continent.
This said, I can clearly see the difference between North America and South America in your musical evidence, in the distribution of mythological motifs (pace Berezkin), in the differences in the levels of linguistic diversity and in some important aspects of kinship systems distributions. I can also see how Amerindian mtDNA lineages belonging to macrohaplogroup N (X, A and B) could be seen as intrusive. X is restricted to North America, the frequencies of A decline as one moves south, while B tends to concentrate in the western areas of of the Americas. Amerindian lineages belonging to macrohaplogroup M are, on the contrary, more frequent in South America than in North America.
However, if the lineages within macrohaplogroup N were a later arrival in the Americas, then why are they so infrequent in Siberia? Haplogroup X and B are virtually non-existent, while A is rare. This requires a hypothesis that the migration of macrohaplogroup N lineages into the Americas happened long time ago (prior to 12K) and since then they got lost in Siberia. But then do we need two migrations in the first place? We've come full circle.
Archaeologically, if there was an intrusion of lineages into the Americas around 12K years ago associated with "Clovis" technologies, which indeed stretch all the way down into South America in the form of "fishtail" points, then we would expect the dates for these technologies to gradually decrease from Alaska down South. Empirically, however, the opposite is true: the dates of Clovis-type points decrease as one moves from the southern areas of North America into Alaska (Mesa culture).
German: "If your Australian-North American musical link is significant, then we should consider the second migration to predate LGM by some 10K years (say, it occurred 20K ago). This is because Australia was isolated for quite some time and any similarities with Australia automatically deepen the chronology in the other region(s) as well."
ReplyDeleteAccording to the hypothesis I just presented, the population of Australia by the Australoid people who now dominate there might well have been a relatively recent phenomenon, possibly associated with the advent of the Dingo, which would be only about 5,000 years ago, possibly earlier, but certainly within the same time-frame as a post LGM migration into North America by unison/iterative/one-beat singers.
German: "However, neither kinship studies, not human origins are popular topics in anthropology. Whether I keep them separate or combine in one book won't move the needle."
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain, German. We are both laboring in much neglected fields. However, thanks to the incredible surge in the genetic research and the compelling findings in this field (I realize you remain very skeptical on this score), I feel sure the anthropologists will be forced to once again take seriously issues they have been studiously ignoring for far too long. It's a shame you find it so difficult to accept the genetic research because a study of kinship geared to the findings of population genetics could have a very powerful impact. I'm convinced the tide will turn, German, and that the sort of problems that interest us will once again take center stage. How long that will take is another matter, however. Infinite patience is what is required, and that is what I have learned to cultivate, through painful experience.
"According to the hypothesis I just presented, the population of Australia by the Australoid people who now dominate there might well have been a relatively recent phenomenon, possibly associated with the advent of the Dingo, which would be only about 5,000 years ago, possibly earlier, but certainly within the same time-frame as a post LGM migration into North America by unison/iterative/one-beat singers."
ReplyDeleteYes, I took note of this possibility. It still a bit exotic to me. Where are the traces of the founding Pama-Nyungan-speaking, Dingo carrying population in Australasia? If the same musical style is found in Australia and in North America but not in Asia, then the whole of Asia must have lost this style and evolved some derived ones, and it takes time to lose it across such vast distances.
Another strange connection between Northern Eurasia/North America and Australia comes from the distribution of the Earth-Diver mythological motif. It's found all over North America (but hardly anywhere south of the Rio-Grande), in Siberia, in India (with very specific matches between some versions of the myth among Austroasiatic speakers and Muskogean Earth-Diver myths in North America) but not in Southeast Asia or Melanesia. The only place where a version of Earth-Diver was recorded is Australia.
German: "A single-wave theory of Amerindian origins is supported by the vast majority of genetic labs out there. This concerns both Y-DNA and mtDNA. Classical markers seem to be consistent with it, too."
ReplyDeleteThis, for what it's worth, is what Oppenheimer thinks happened. His theory isn't original by the way, but based on a theory developed by some anthropologists whose names I don't have time to look up at the moment:
1. Early pre-LGM migration into the Americas by paleo-Indians, possibly from the original "beachcomber" lineage. Expansion of this group possibly along the western coast all the way down to the tip of S. America.
2. The glacier reaches its maximum, at the height of the most recent ice-age, forcing all paleo-siberians from the earlier migration now living in North America either north into what he calls the "Beringia refuge," a region of relatively tolerable, though still very challenging climate, or farther south into Middle and South America. Groups already living in Middle and South America are unaffected and stay put. Most of North America becomes uninhabitable during this period.
3. After the LGM peaks and the glacier begins to thaw, North America is repopulated from both Beringia and Central and South America. During this period there may have been an additional migration into N. America from Siberia.
Note that this scenario can accommodate either a single early migration, complicated by a long retreat to Beringia, OR two separate migrations, assuming a second group entered after the LGM via the now much reduced Bering land bridge from Siberia. This would account for Clovis, by the way. (A third, much later, migration of Inuit people from Siberia must also be considered.)
Oppenheimer recognizes the difference in linguistic diversity between South and North and this is how he explains it. The south is more diverse than the north because the north was uninhabited for such a long time and a tightly packed Beringia could have tended to merge the various language families through drift, while the jungle environment of the south would have kept them apart.
How all this fits with the genetic data -- or my B3a1 musical haplogroup -- is hard to say. As far as I can tell, the last word has not yet been spoken on the genetics of such a complex and diverse region as S. America, where there are many groups whose DNA has never been studied.
Correction: "forcing all paleo-siberians from the earlier migration now living in North America . . . " in my last post should read: "forcing all paleo-indians from the earlier migration now living in North America . . . "
ReplyDelete"The south is more diverse than the north because the north was uninhabited for such a long time and a tightly packed Beringia could have tended to merge the various language families through drift..."
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that North America was affected by the Ice Age and that its reduced linguistic diversity is a reflection thereof. North America is still much more diverse linguistically than the corresponding areas of Asia and Europe. And there's no area in Siberia that could compete with North America in terms of linguistic diversity, hence it's hard to imagine how North American Indian languages could've been transplanted from Siberia. As far as linguistic typology goes, North and South American languages are closer to each other than either region to any other region in the Old World. All these observations do favor a single early migration into the Americas with subsequent re-expansions (possibly, as Oppenheimer, suggests from Beringia down south and from the South up north) vs. a two-migration or a three-migration theory. There's nothing, however, in the data that makes an original migration INTO the Americas necessary. Amerindian populations have had a very low effective and demographic population size throughout their history. The expansion of Clovis tools in late Pleistocee-early Holocene from southern areas of North America into South America and into Alaska and Siberia marks a rare population increase and an accompanying technological innovation. The unique long-term demographic structure of Amerindian populations explains most of the signals of "evolutionary recency" that scholars attribute to them.