Cover not available
Part of
Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
Edited by Martine Robbeets and Alexander Savelyev
[Not in series 215] 2017
► pp. 93–121

Chapter 5
The language of the Transeurasian farmers

| Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena,
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.
Keywords: Transeurasian, Farming Language Dispersal Hypothesis, genealogical relatedness, homeland, Neolithic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The diversity hotspot principle
  • 3.Bayesian phylolinguistics
  • 4.Linking demographic pulses to language dispersals
    • 4.1The establishment of millet agriculture
    • 4.2The eastward spread of millet agriculture
    • 4.3The integration and spread of rice and millet agriculture
    • 4.4Demography mapped on linguistic phylogeny
  • 5.Cultural reconstruction
    • 5.1Economic plants and cultivation
    • 5.2Subsistence activities
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.215.05rob
References (52)
References
Ahn, Sung-Mo. 2010. The emergence of rice agriculture in Korea: Archaeobotanical perspectives. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2: 89–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ahn, Sung-Mo, Kim, Jangsuk & Hwang, Jaehoon. 2015. Sedentism, settlements, and radiocarbon dates of Neolithic Korea. Asian Perspectives 54 (1): 113–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barber, Elisabeth. 1995. The Mummies of Urumchi. New York NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Bawden, Charles. 1997. Mongolian-English Dictionary. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benzing, Johannes. 1956. Die tungusischen Sprachen. Versuch einer vergleichenden Grammatik. Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 11. Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur.Google Scholar
Bestel, Sheahan et al. 2014. The evolution of millet domestication, Middle Yellow River Region, North China: Evidence from charred seeds at the late Upper Paleolithic Shizitan Locality 9 site. The Holocene 24: 261.Google Scholar
Blust, Robert. 2013. Formosan evidence for Early Austronesian knowledge of Iron. Oceanic Linguistics 52: 255–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cincius, Vera Ivanovna (ed.) 1975–1977. Sravnitel’nyj slovar’ tunguso-man’čžurskich jazykov. Vol. 1–2. Moscow: Nauk.Google Scholar
Crawford, Gary W. & Lee, Gyoung-Ah. 2003. Agricultural origins in the Korean Peninsula. Antiquity 77: 87–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crawford, Gary W. & Shen, C. 1998. The origins of rice agriculture: Recent progress in East Asia. Antiquity 72: 858–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert & Dai, Xiangming. 2017. Chiefdoms and states in the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region: A comparative analysis of settlement systems in North China. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29 (4): 455–468. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanihara, Kazurō. 1991. Dual structure model for the population history of the Japanese. Japan Review 2: 1–33.Google Scholar
Heggarty, Paul and David Beresford-Jones. 2014. Farming-language dispersals: A worldwide survey. In Claire Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 1–9. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Hunt, Harriet et al. 2008. Millets across Eurasia: chronology and context of early records of the genera Panicum and Setaria from archaeological sites in the Old World. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17 (1): 5–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janhunen, Juha. 1996. Manchuria: An Ethnic History [Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 222]. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.Google Scholar
Jeong, Choongwon, Nakagome, Shigeki & Di Rienzo, Anna. 2016. Deep history of East Asian populations revealed through genetic analysis of the Ainu. Genetics 202: 261–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jia, Xin et al. 2017. Spatial and temporal variations in prehistoric human settlement and their influencing factors on the south bank of the Xar Moron River, Northeastern China. Frontiers of Earth Science 11 (1): 137–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jinam, Timothy et al. 2012. The history of human populations in the Japanese Archipelago inferred from genome-wide SNP data with a special reference to the Ainu and the Ryukyuan populations. Journal of Human Genetics 57: 787–795. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johanson, Lars & Robbeets, Martine. 2010. Introduction. In Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance [Turcologica 78], Lars Johanson & Martine Robbeets (eds), 1–5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Kanzawa-Kiriyama, Hideaki et al. 2016. A partial nuclear genome of the Jomons who lived 3000 years ago in Fukushima, Japan. Journal of Human Genetics, 1–9.Google Scholar
Kim, Juwon, Dongho Ko, D. O. Chaoke, Yonfeng Han, Lianyu Piao, and B. V. Boldyrev. 2008. Materials of Spoken Manchu. Altaic Languages Series 1. Seoul: Seoul National University Press.Google Scholar
Kuzmin, Yaroslav V. 2013. The beginnings of prehistoric agriculture in the Russian Far East. Current evidence and concepts. Documenta Praehistorica 40: 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Gyoung-Ah. 2011. The transition from foraging to farming in prehistoric Korea. Current Anthropology 52 (4): 307–329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Tao 2016. Economic differentiation in Hongshan core zone communities (northeastern China): A geochemical perspective. University of Pittsburgh doctoral dissertation.Google Scholar
Liu, Li et al. 2016. Plant-based subsistence strategies and development of complex societies in Neolithic Northeast China: Evidence from grinding stones. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7: 247–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, Xinyi et al. 2012. The earliest evidence of millet as a staple crop: New light on Neolithic foodways in North China. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 149: 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Samuel. 1961. Dagur Mongolian: Texts and Lexicon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Samuel Elmo. 1996. Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic question. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Menges, Karl Heinrich. 1984. Korean and Altaic. A Preliminary Sketch. Central Asiatic Journal 28: 234–295.Google Scholar
Norman, Jerry. 2013. A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary. Harving-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nugteren, Hans. 2011. Mongolic Phonology and the Qinghai-Gansu Languages. PhD dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Peterson, Christian & Drennan, Robert. 2011. Patterned variation in regional trajectories of community growth. In The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, Michael E. Smith (ed.), 88–137. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poppe, Nicholas. 1960. Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen, Teil 1: Vergleichende Lautlehre [Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Neue Serie 4]. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Ramsey, Samuel Robert. 1993. Some remarks on reconstructing earlier Korean. Language Research 29:433–441.Google Scholar
. 1997. The invention of the Korean alphabet and the history of the Korean language. In Young-Key Kim-Renaud (ed.), The Korean Alphabet. Its History and Structure, 131–143. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramstedt, Gustaf John. 1906. Mogholica. Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Monghol-Sprache in Afghanistan. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne. Helsinki: Suomalai-Ugrilainen Seura.Google Scholar
. 1935. Kalmückisches Wörterbuch. Lexica Societatis Fenno-Ugricae 111. Helsinki: Suomalai-Ugrilainen Seura.Google Scholar
. 1949. Studies in Korean Etymology [Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne 95]. Helsinki: Suomalai-Ugrilainen Seura.Google Scholar
Robbeets, Martine. 2005. Is Japanese Related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? [Turcologica 64]. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
. 2015. Diachrony of Verb Morphology: Japanese and the Transeurasian Languages [Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 291]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal. Language Dynamics and Change 7. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robbeets, Martine & Bouckaert, Remco. Forthcoming. Bayesian phylolinguistics and the classification of the Transeurasian languages.
Sakakura, Atsuyoshi. 1966. Gokōsei no kenkyū [A study of word formation]. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.Google Scholar
Shelach, Gideon. 2000. The earliest Neolithic cultures of northeast China. Journal of World Prehistory 14: 363–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soffer, Olga, Adovasio, James M. & Hyland, David C. 2000. The “Venus” figurines. Textiles, basketry, gender, and status in the Upper Paleolithic. Current Anthropology 41: 511–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Starostin, Sergej, Dybo, Anna & Mudrak, Oleg. 2003. Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Tadmor, Uri, Haspelmath, Martin & Taylor, Bradley. 2010. Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. Diachronica 27(2): 226–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tedlock, Barbara. 2009. The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. London: Random House.Google Scholar
Vostretsov, Yuri E. 2006. Turning points in the cultural evolution of prehistoric Primorye. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 27(3): 25–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Chuan-Chao et al. 2016. Reconstructing population history in East Asia. Presentation held at the 7th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology (ISBA7). The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford. 14th–16th September.Google Scholar
Weber, Steven A. & Fuller, Dorian Q. 2008. Millets and their role in early agriculture. Pragdhara 18: 69–90.Google Scholar
Zhao, Zhijun. 2011. New archaeobotanic data for the study of the origins of agriculture in China. Current Anthropology 52: 295–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Hudson, Mark J., Ilona R. Bausch, Martine Robbeets, Tao Li, J. Alyssa White & Linda Gilaizeau
2021. Bronze Age Globalisation and Eurasian Impacts on Later Jōmon Social Change. Journal of World Prehistory 34:2 ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Johanson, Lars
2021. Turkic, DOI logo
Bellwood, Peter
2020. Some observations on the transeurasian language family, from the perspective of the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Cui, Yinqiu, Fan Zhang, Pengcheng Ma, Linyuan Fan, Chao Ning, Quanchao Zhang, Wei Zhang, Lixin Wang & Martine Robbeets
2020. Bioarchaeological perspective on the expansion of Transeurasian languages in Neolithic Amur River basin. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Hudson, Mark J., Shigeki Nakagome & John B. Whitman
2020. The evolving Japanese: the dual structure hypothesis at 30. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Hudson, Mark J. & Martine Robbeets
2020. Archaeolinguistic evidence for the farming/language dispersal of Koreanic. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Kim, Jangsuk & Jinho Park
2020. Millet vs rice: an evaluation of the farming/language dispersal hypothesis in the Korean context. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Nelson, Sarah, Irina Zhushchikhovskaya, Tao Li, Mark Hudson & Martine Robbeets
2020. Tracing population movements in ancient East Asia through the linguistics and archaeology of textile production. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Robbeets, Martine & Chuan-Chao Wang
2020. About millets and beans, words and genes. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo
Wang, Chuan-Chao & Martine Robbeets
2020. The homeland of Proto-Tungusic inferred from contemporary words and ancient genomes. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.