Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages (original) (raw)

Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative

Robbeets et al.1 argue that the dispersal of the so-called “Transeurasian” languages, a highly disputed language superfamily comprising the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic language families, was driven by Neolithic farmers in the West Liao River region of China. They adduce evidence from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to support their claim. An admirable feature of the Robbeets et al.’s paper is that all their datasets can be accessed. However, a closer investigation of all three types of evidence reveals fundamental problems with each of them. Robbeets et al.’s analysis of the linguistic data does not conform to the minimal standards required by traditional scholarship in historical linguistics and contradicts their own stated sound correspondence principles. A reanalysis of the genetic data finds that they do not conclusively support the farming-driven dispersal of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, nor the two-wave spread of farming to Korea. Their archae...

The emergence of ‘Transeurasian’ language families in Northeast Asia as viewed from archaeological evidence

Evolutionary Human Sciences

From a linguistic standpoint, Proto-Japonic and Proto-Koreanic are assumed to have split off the Transeurasian languages in southern Manchuria. The linguistic idea that Proto-Japonic came earlier than Proto-Koreanic in the chronological scheme means that the Proto-Japonic language first entered the Korean Peninsula, and from there spread to the Japanese archipelago at the beginning of the Yayoi period, around the 9th century BC, while the arrival of Proto-Koreanic in southern Korea is associated with the spread of the rolled rim vessel culture around the 5th century BC. The genealogical sequence of the Pianpu, Mumun and Yayoi cultures, which shared the same pottery production techniques, indicates the spread of Proto-Japonic. On the other hand, migrants moved from Liaodong to the Korean Peninsula and established the rolled rim vessel culture. This population movement was likely due to social and political reasons as the Yan state enlarged its territory eastward. The Proto-Koreanic o...

Reconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia

2010

Focusing on the northern part of the East Asian region, the paper discusses the principles of positioning languages and ethnic groups in time and place.1 The main argument is that ethnic groups can be followed back in time only on the basis of the genetic lineages of their languages. In Northeast Asia, eight welldocumented lineages of languages can be established, including Sinitic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Amuric, Koreanic, Japonic, and Ainuic. For each of these lineages, it is possible to postulate actual protoand prehistorical political, cultural, and territorial connections. The modern linguistic map of the region is a result of relatively recent expansions. These expansions have not necessarily involved large-scale human migrations. Rather, they are results of linguistic diffusion, the basic mechanism of which has been language shift. The impact of language shift is also visible in the synchronic areal and typological patterns exhibited by the languages of the region.

(2017) The Language of the Traneurasian farmers. In: Martine Robbeets & Alexander Savelyev (eds.), Language Dispersal Beyond Farming. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 93-121.

The Farming Language Dispersal Hypothesis makes the radical and controversial claim that many of the world's major language families owe their present-day distribution to the adoption of agriculture by their early speakers. Especially for regions such as Northern Asia, where farming is only marginally viable, this claim has been seriously called into question. This paper investigates to what extent agriculture impacted the dispersal of the Transeurasian language family, i.e. the genealogical grouping consisting of the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic languages. For this purpose, I establish the internal family structure of Transeurasian, reconstruct cultural vocabulary and situate the Transeurasian languages in time and space. Assessing the cultural reconstructions and mapping the tree topology, time-depth and homeland on the demographic transitions visible in the archaeological and genetic record, I find indications that proto-Transeurasian was spoken by people gradually adopting farming and that its dispersal was indeed driven by agriculture.

Archaeolinguistic evidence for the farming/language dispersal of Koreanic

Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020

While earlier research often saw Altaic as an exception to the farming/language dispersal hypothesis, recent work on millet cultivation in northeast China has led to the proposal that the West Liao basin was the Neolithic homeland of a Transeurasian language family. Here, we examine the archaeolinguistic evidence used to associate millet farming dispersals with Proto-Macro-Koreanic, analysing the identifica- tion of population movements in the archaeological record, the role of small-scale cultivation in language dispersals, and Middle–Late Neolithic demography. We conclude that the archaeological evidence is con- sistent with the arrival and spread of Proto-Macro-Koreanic on the peninsula in association with millet cultivation in the Middle Neolithic. This dispersal of Proto-Macro-Koreanic occurred before an apparent population crash after 3000 BC, which can probably be linked with a Late Neolithic decline affecting many regions across northern Eurasia. We suggest plague (Yersinia pestis) as one possible cause of an apparently simultaneous population decline in Korea and Japan.

The spread of agriculture in eastern Asia Archaeological bases for hypothetical farmer/language dispersals

Millets and rice were important for the demographic history of China. This review draws on current archaeobotanical evidence for rice and millets across China, Korea, eastern Russia, Taiwan, Mainland southeast Asia, and Japan, taking a critical approach to dating evidence, evidence for cultivation, and morphological domestication. There is no evidence to suggest that millets and rice were domesticated simultaneously within a single region. Instead, 5 regions of north China are candidates for independent early cultivation of millets that led to domestication, and 3 regions of the Yangtze basin are candidates for separate rice domestication trajectories. The integration of rice and millet into a single agricultural system took place ca. 4000 bc, and after this the spread of agricultural systems and population growth are in evidence. The most striking evidence for agricultural dispersal and population growth took place between 3000 and 2500 bc, which has implications for major language dispersals. Keywords East Asian agriculture – millet – rice – archaeobotany – domestication – agricultural dispersal