Chapter published in:
Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
Edited by Martine Robbeets and Alexander Savelyev
[Not in series 215] 2017
► pp. 93–121

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
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 rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 21 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.215.05rob
References

References

Ahn, Sung-Mo
2010 The emergence of rice agriculture in Korea: Archaeobotanical perspectives. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2: 89–98. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ahn, Sung-Mo, Kim, Jangsuk & Hwang, Jaehoon
2015 Sedentism, settlements, and radiocarbon dates of Neolithic Korea. Asian Perspectives 54 (1): 113–143. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, Gary W. & Shen, C.
1998 The origins of rice agriculture: Recent progress in East Asia. Antiquity 72: 858–66. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Gyoung-Ah
2011 The transition from foraging to farming in prehistoric Korea. Current Anthropology 52 (4): 307–329. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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.Google 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal. Language Dynamics and Change 7. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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.Google 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 8 other publications

Bellwood, Peter
2020. Some observations on the transeurasian language family, from the perspective of the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 Crossref 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 Crossref logo
Hudson, Mark J., Shigeki Nakagome & John B. Whitman
2020. The evolving Japanese: the dual structure hypothesis at 30. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 Crossref logo
Hudson, Mark J. & Martine Robbeets
2020. Archaeolinguistic evidence for the farming/language dispersal of Koreanic. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 Crossref 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 Crossref 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 Crossref logo
Robbeets, Martine & Chuan-Chao Wang
2020. About millets and beans, words and genes. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 Crossref logo
Wang, Chuan-Chao & Martine Robbeets
2020. The homeland of Proto-Tungusic inferred from contemporary words and ancient genomes. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 april 2021. 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.