<Note: some corrections and a
table still to be added. Keep watching! MW>>
INTRODUCTION TO MT 30: The Newsletter
(Editor this issue: H. Fleming)
THE HOTTEST AND THE LATEST NEWS, AS OF MID-FEBRUARY, 1998.
This time around, the hot news is very brief, yet very important.
* At the top of the list is a remarkable study by Stephen Zegura and Mike Hammer about the original Great Diaspora which neatly confirms the basic hypothesis first advanced by Becky Cann but also allows for some interbreeding with the Untermenschen in situ. As in other areas it still remains the case, however, that the interpretation of evidence as confirming, falsifying, or both (!) is not so easy -- not easy at all this time.
* In addition Chomskyite theory of language origins seems to have taken a hit from research on chimpanzee brains --maybe
* Yet another archeological site in the New World, `too old' for the Maginot Line to withstand, is unearthed
* Extensive biogenetics of New World falsifies migration theory --maybe-- and dates first migrations to 30-40 kya.
* Is a 0.56 correlation very good?
OBITUARIES
Professor Gordon Hewes has died.
His many contributions to language origins research and anthropology are
noted in a colleague's eulogy.
NEWS OF OFFICERS' ACTIVITIES,
INCLUDING A CONFERENCE
Seven long rangers were invited
to a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico in December. They
were not adjuncts to some larger conference; their work was the central
focus. Quite a set of energetic minds bumping into each other! John Bengtson
reports on things as he saw them. Hal Fleming perceived some systematic
differences in strategies, even tactics; he reports on them. Dolgopolsky's
passionate performance is noted.
THE MEMBERSHIP (PERMITTED)
Add Giorgio Banti / U/Roma / Italia.
Inter alios.
More names are added to the "Good
Guys" list which is enclosed.
OUR JOURNAL, MT-III, COMES OUT
SOON
(Despite several serious setbacks):
Your patience in awaiting the third
issue of our Journal is appreciated. We hope to be aware of the Ides of
March at out-put time. Key features of this issue will be (a) Paul Whitehouse's
dauntless efforts on Nihali & Kusunda, (b) several people, led by our
expert on antiquity, Igor Diakonoff, have a go at Sumerian, (c) a fine
inter-scholar mutual review of several books on language origins, (d) Ken
Hale reviews a major new book on native American languages by Campbell,
and (e) Starostin's long review of Chirikba's new book on West Caucasic.
Plus -- assorted goodies.
ASLIP BUSINESS
The Annual Meeting of ASLIP will
be April 18, 1998, Saturday, from noon until 3 pm, at the African Studies
Center, Boston University, 270 Bay State Road, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Our meeting will be on the 4th floor.
TIDBIT
According to our best informant
in Arizona, Joseph Greenberg will speak at the University of Arizona, Tucson
(Arizona) on April 16, 1998. The topic is Eurasiatic. After the talk, drop
by in Boston for the Annual Meeting.
THE HOTTEST AND THE LATEST NEWS, AS OF MID-FEBRUARY, 1998.
The hottest biogenetic news is exciting and even a little strange. It appears that strong confirmation for Rebecca Cann's theory of human origins has appeared, but along with some support for the opposing view, i.e., the `rising tide lifts all boats' theory or multiregionalism. Extraordinary! Is it possible that both sides of a major scientific dispute are correct, at least in part, and incorrect, at least in part? Mon dieu! let us not take this question to philosophy; let us bring it to earth! What's happening? Stephen Zegura and Michael Hammer (both U/Arizona) are publishing their formal article next month in JMBE. We are not allowed to `steal JMBE's thunder' prior to publication, except only the informal general remarks about it made by Zegura in Santa Fe), New Mexico, in December. So our remarks are very general and serve to call attention to the forthcoming article in the JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION.
The substance of the Arizonan efforts is highly technical, analytical and quite beyond an audience of non-specialists. They consulted with Templeton of U/Utah at several points, so that their models are fire-hardened as it were. Templeton is famous, as everyone knows, as the analyst who threw cold technical water on Becky Cann's hot new theory. His attentions were what is expected when we talk about testing and falsifying hypotheses. It is presumed that Templeton strengthened, nay improved, the Hammer-Zegura models. The rest of our remarks will be entirely free of technical details other than the statement that both mtDNA and Y-chromosome data were used, as well as @@-globin. (Remember the Harding article in MT-28 ?) Basically, Stephen and Mike found that a common modern human ancestor could be proposed for 150 kya and in Africa; that the Great Diaspora out of Africa could be dated to around 110 kya; that there had been some feedback in that some Asians had migrated to Africa circa 30 kya; and that the Diaspora was primarily a movement/migration of males who interbred with the local females -- les autochthones -- found on their routes or in the new regions of Earth which they went to. At the end of this we also find another surprise -- social structure analysis or good old kinship study -- will now occupy one of the foci of our interest. This time for prehistory instead of synchronic theory. Since some of our long rangers are also experts on kinship, we bid the biogeneticists to seek their advice. I want especially to mention Bernd Lambert of Cornell and Stephen Tyler of Rice, two superb analysts of kinship systems in Oceania, India & elsewhere. We predict that you will need their help -- seriously.
Subject to the publishing restrictions mentioned above, we have pieced together an abstract or precis of the Zegura/Hammer paper from Stephen's oral presentation in Santa Fe) and some remarks in a letter. This is not the formal presentation of their paper. This one, among other things, is writ in English. Heh, heh! (Hereinafter 'we' refers to Hammer and Zegura.) "We surveyed nine di-allelic polymorphic sites on the Y chromosome of 1,544 individuals from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the New World. Phylogenetic analyses of these nine sites resulted in a tree for 10 distinct Y haplotypes with a coalescence time of 150,000 years. The 10 haplotypes were unevenly distributed among human populations : five were restricted to a particular continent, two were shared between Africa and Europe, one was present only in the Old World, and two were found in all geographic regions surveyed. The ancestral haplotype was limited to African populations. Random permutation procedures revealed statistically significant patterns of geographical structuring of this paternal genetic variation. The results of a nested cladistic analysis indicated that these geographical associations arose through a combination of processes including restricted, recurrent gene flow (isolation by distance) and range expansions. We inferred that one of the oldest events in the nested cladistic analysis was a range expansion out of Africa which resulted in the complete replacement of Y chromosomes throughout the Old World, a finding consistent with many versions of the Out of Africa Replacement Model. A second and more recent range expansion brought Asian Y chromosomes back to Africa without replacing the indigenous African male gene pool. Thus, the previously observed high levels of Y chromosomal genetic diversity in Africa may be due in part to bidirectional population movements.
Finally, a comparison of our results with those from nested cladistic analyses of human mtDNA and @@-globin data revealed different patterns of inferences for males and females concerning the relative roles of population history (range expansions) and population structure (recurrent gene flow), thereby adding a new sexspecific component to models of human evolution."
Their analysis includes some dates of interest to us, remembering that biogenetic dating remains largely unverified but highly interesting. For the Adam in this scenario, he would be dated to 147,00035,000; he would be an African, and his tribe would remain in Africa for many millennia. Then around 110,000 they leave and eventually replace the males who had lived in the Old World outside of Africa, such as late Homo erectus types, Neanderthals, etc. Then around 55,000 begins a movement of East Asians who re-enter Africa around 31,000 years ago. There are other later 'events', including 20,000 ya in North Africa which might be the 'Iberians' entering, but these details will have to be left for the article in JMBE. Along with the whole technical and mathematical basis for their report. On the subject of the male/female differences -- and this will become the hot topic -- we may borrow a bit from their original article, just to get the topic started.
Now begin quoting: "Both Templeton's
(1993) original nested cladistic analysis of human mtDNA and his methodologically
more rigorous re-analysis (Templeton 1997b) are highlighted by recurrent
gene flow restricted by isolation by distance throughout the Old World
for the entire time period encompassing the mtDNA TMRCA. This short-range
gene flow is pervasive at all levels of analysis and underscores the paramount
influence of population structure on the dynamics of human maternal genome
evolution. No inter-continental range expansions similar to the three postulated
on the basis of our Y chromosome data are detectable in global mtDNA data.
Thus, the effects of population history seem to have left a much clearer
inter-continental imprint on our paternal-specific genome than the regional
signals left in our mtDNA. One possible explanation for this pattern is
that males disperse more than females during long-range inter-continental
population movements while females may disperse more than males during
short-range intra-continental migrations."
"If males and females do, indeed,
exhibit major differences in their ancient population structure and demographic
histories, then we might expect traces of these differences to be preserved
in the autosomal DNA record. Templeton's (1998) re-analysis of Harding
et al.'s (1997) @@-globin data represents the only nested cladistic analysis
of a human autosomal data set. The deepest clade in the @@globin cladogram
showed an out of Africa expansion; however, the 800,000 year coalescence
time for the @@-globin gene tree makes it unlikely that this range expansion
had anything to do with the out of Africa event detected by our Y chromosome
data. On the other hand, this time frame is more concordant with the sudden
appearance of the possibly African-derived Homo antecessor in Spain
sometime before 780,000 years ago (...) [Note: cf MT-28 - HF]. Moving to
less deep structures, all the mid-level (2step) clades gave strong evidence
for gene flow restricted via isolation by distance occurring more than
200,000 years ago throughout the Old World. Finally, two range expansions
were detected at the 1step clade level: (1) the aforementioned expansion
from Southeast Asia [sic] back to Africa, and (2) an out of Africa expansion
that involved the oldest haplotypes by outgroup rooting, making the temporal
framework of this expansion unclear (i.e., it may be a recent expansion
or the same one detected at higher levels in the cladogram)."
"This out of Africa expansion was
not a replacement event because it was nested within a 2-step clade characterized
by gene flow restricted via isolation by distance. In order to equate this
out of Africa event with the one detected in our Y chromosome data, one
would have to argue that perhaps Eurasian males were replaced but females
were not. This is consistent with the demographic picture from the nested
cladistic analyses of mtDNA data (...) where females show no sign of replacement
and where gene flow rather than range expansion is the oldest inference.
Therefore, the @@-globin locus integrates aspects of both the mtDNA and
Y chromosome analyses, and provides support for the hypotheses of contrasting
male and female population structure and demographic histories. Because
there is evidence for restricted, recurrent gene flow throughout the Old
World during the entire history of anatomically modern humans, as well
for range expansions out of Africa >100,000 years ago, the nested cladistic
analysis results from these three types of data conform with genetic predictions
based on human origin(s) models characterized by interbreeding between
migrating and resident populations. Thus, the combined data add a new sex-specific
component to the conceptual framework of both Brae@uer's (1989) African
Hybridization and Replacement model and of Smith, Falsetti, and Donnelly's
(1989) Assimilation model: the possibility that the Old World female genetic
complement was preserved by hybridization, whereas the Eurasian male component
was replaced by African Y chromosomes." [Note: these two common terms are
not actually clear here. Eurasian refers to pre-African Homo types, resident
in Eurasia + Ocenia. Old World seems to mean all that + Africa. But tis
not certain. -- HF]
Since news of this paper came out,
many people have wondered how Steve 'n Mike's theory could be worked out
or understood. One natural observation would be that mtDNA ought to show
evidence of inbreeding, gene flow from the Untermensch, but it doesn't
seem to.
First Americans: Has 3-Migration Theory been Falsified?
While Stephen Zegura was joining
Mike Hammer in proposing their new theory, discussed above, Steve was involved
indirectly in another journal, AJHG, by virtue of his participation in
the original Amerind theory of three separate migrations to the New World,
long known as the Greenberg-ZeguraTurner theory. As you know, it accounted
for the Amerinds, NaDene, and Eskimaleuts by proposing three migrations
bearing us across the Bering Straits around Clovis horizon time -- 12th
millennium BP. Mind you, Steve was not under attack, nothing personal,
but the import of the AJHG article is, in fact, a refutation of 3-migration
theory. Well, maybe it is.
Writing in the American Journal
of Human Genetics 61:1413-1423, 1997, Sandro L.Bonatto & Francisco
M. Salzano of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre,
Brazil published "Diversity and Age of the Four Major mtDNA Haplogroups
, and Their Implications for the Peopling of the New World."
Their Summary is given forthwith:
"Despite considerable investigation, two main questions on the origin of
Native Americans remain the topic of intense debate -- namely, the number
and time of migration(s) into the Americas. Using the 720 available Amerindian
mtDNA control-region sequences, we reanalyzed the nucleotide diversity
found within each of the four major mtDNA haplogroups (A-D) thought to
have been present in the colonization of the New World. We first verified
whether the within-haplogroup sequence diversity could be used as a measure
of the haplogroup's age. The pattern of shared polymorphism, the mismatch
distribution, the phylogenetic tree, the value of Tajima's D, and the computer
simulations all suggested that the four haplogroups underwent a bottleneck
followed by a large population expansion. The four haplogroup diversities
were very similar to each other, offering a strong support for their single
origin. They suggested that the beginning of the Native Americans' ancestral-population
differentiation occurred 30,000-40,000 years before the present (ybp).
These values are in good agreement with the New World- settlement model
that we have presented elsewhere, extending the results initially found
for haplogroup A to the three other major groups of mtDNA sequences found
in the Americas. These results put the peopling of the Americas clearly
in an early pre-Clovis time frame." Before going on, we should add
to their conclusions that they find no support at all for the 100+ separate
migrations required by the logic of the usual Americanist taxonomy -- with
its 100+ phyla! I would suppose, albeit without proof, that the biogeneticists
find the notion of 100+ linguistic phyla too ridiculous to comment upon.
Since more and more nowadays we
ask whose data was sampled and how representative the sample was, we list
here the tribes/ethnicities which their study used, either from their own
field work or that of the others (like Ward, Torroni, and Merriwether).
The donors were from:
South America: Xavante, Zoro, Gaviao,
Wai Wai, Suru@ø, Mapuche, Yanomama, Wayampi, Kayapo, Arara, Katuena,
Poturujara, Awa-Guaja, Tiriyo, Yanomami, Colombian mummies
Central America: Huetar, Ng@b@,
Kuna.
North America: Bella Coola, Haida,
Yakima, Athapascan, Nootka, Inupiaq & west Greenland Eskimo. Then we
leave this problem for biogeneticists to solve. Interesting!
Nootka. They wrote the silly
name Nuu-Chah-Nulth which I refuse to publish. The people have been called
the Nootka for ages! In their Discussion a more nuanced, more prehistory-oriented
argument is presented. Quoting: (p.1421)
"In our previous study (Bonatto
and Salzano 1997), using mainly haplogroup A sequences, we concluded that
those mtDNA data strongly indicate that all Native Americans originated
from a single colonization event that occurred in Beringia >22,000 ybp
ago, possibly 30,000-40,000 ybp. We suggested a scenario, based on Szathmary's
works (e.g., Szathmary 1993), in which the Native American ancestral population
settled in the Beringian landmass during sometime before expanding. Eventually
they crossed the Alberta ice-free corridor and colonized the rest of the
American continent. The collapse of that corridor, 25,000-14,000 (Hoffecker
et al.1993) or 30,000-11,000 (Lemmen et al.1994) ybp, isolated the
people still living in Beringia, from whom originated the NaDene and Eskimos
(with their reduced overall mtDNA diversity); those south of the ice sheets
gave rise to the Amerind-speaking peoples. The present results for the
four major haplogroups' diversification ages agree very well with these
estimates. When only the mean values are considered, these estimates suggest
a very early date (30,000-40,000 ybp) for the beginning of the diversification
of the Native American ancestral population, with a lower bound of 25,000
ybp."
"At least two types of evidence
support the idea that haplogroups' sequence differentiation probably began
during Beringia's settlement and not in Asia before the colonization process:
(1) our estimates of 100 -fold ancient population expansion suggest
that the diversification began during an intensive colonization process;
and (2) if the expansion had occurred somewhere else in Asia, then one
should find there sequences, with all markers for each haplogroup, at a
high number and frequency, similar to the 90% frequency found in Native
Americans; however, only the founding sequences for each haplogroup have
been found in Asia so far -- and they have been found at a very low frequency
(see Forster et al. 1996; Kolaman et al. 1996; Bonatto and Salzano 1997).
The few additional founding sequences for haplogroup A that have been suggested
-- in the Na-Dene and Eskimo (see Forster et al.1996) -- are probably derived
ones and will be discussed elsewhere (authors' unpublished data) . . .
As for Torroni et al's (1992,1994) hypothesis, our previous results do
not support the idea of an independent Na-Dene migration (...), and our
present analyses also do not support their suggestion of a more recent
haplogroup B migration. Similarly, neither Horai et al's (1993) proposal
of different migrations, 14,000-21,000 ybp, for each haplogroup nor the
hypothesis of a Polynesian contribution for haplogroup B sequences found
in America (...) was supported. In any case, Torroni et al's (1994) estimated
average arrival date, 26,00034,000 ybp, for the other three haplogroups
is very close to our estimates (...). In general, Forster et al's (1996)
scenario for the peopling of the Americas is similar to that which we proposed
(...). They postulated a single and early entry (>20,000 ybp) and suggested
that, although the Amerinds colonized all the continent and maintained
their original diversity, Beringians (Eskimo + Na-Dene) reduced their diversity,
because of the climate's deterioration until 11,000 ybp, at which time
they expanded to their present size. Forster et al also have presented
coalescence ages for Native American haplogroups, using a data set very
similar to our HSV-I -- but very different methods -- to estimate the haplogroups'
age. Although they did not calculate any CI [Note: Confidence Interval
-HF] for their age estimates, they suggested 20,000-25,000 ybp as the arrival
time for the Amerinds, which is near our lower-bound estimates. Their haplogroup
coalescence ages, however, are probably underestimates of the diversification
times since these populations' entrance in the Americas, since they estimated
the diversity values on the basis of each haplogroup with each tribe separately.
Their results would receive a strong influence from the recent demographic
history of each tribe, which would significantly change the ancient parameters
that we are interested to estimate. A good example of this can be seen
in their estimated age for the Central American Amerinds, which showed
a coalescence age lower than that of the South Americans. Far from suggesting
that Central American Amerinds originated more recently than South American
Amerinds, this result only reflects the reduced mtDNA diversity found in
the Chibcha groups, from which all Central American mtDNA sequences came.
The Chibcha's reduced mtDNA diversity is thought to have occurred because
of recent events (Kolman et al 1995)." End of quote.
It is really not terribly bad news
for either Zegura, Greenberg or Turner. The guts of their proposal seems
to remain. Again stating that biogenetic dating is not yet sooo reliable,
still the Maginot Line archeologists can get small comfort from the Brazilians'
paper!
Yet Another 'Too Early' Site
Well, just to add injury to insult,
in the only terms the Maginot Line archeologists seem to credit, one more
excavation shows greater time depth than the Clovis hypothesis can allow.
As the headline in Mammoth Trumpet
said in January 1998: "OHIO CAVE, SEALED SINCE ICE AGE, YIELDS DATA
ON PALEO-AMERICANS." In Sheriden Cave which is part of a cave system
in Wyandot County, about 40 miles south of Lake Erie the principal excavator,
Kenneth B. Tankersley (Kent State U.), and a large team found very rich
animal fossils, many of extinct species, plus human artifacts. "The area
was repeatedly scoured by Pleistocene glaciation, and was deglaciated only
about 14,100 years ago." The excavator had believed that large caves in
Ohio, and indeed in the eastern United States, were empty as far as Pleistocene
finds were concerned. Now much more can be done by looking in other caves.
The fossil animals included a giant
long-kegged omnivore, the short-faced bear (Arctodus simus); stag moose
with forked antlers (Cervalces sotti); giant beaver (Castoroides ohioensis)
which got up to 9 feet long; flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus),
wide-ranging American pig of the Pleistocene; and caribou (Rangifer tarandus).
And many other kinds. At the human artifact levels, which lay below 30
feet of sterile sediment, dates for the range of human artifacts ranged
from 10,000 to 13,000 BP by radio-carbon. The range was not variability
so much as it was top to bottom layers. The nearly 13,000 date was near
bottom.
In that same January issue of the
'Strumpet Anne Roosevelt (Field Museum, Chicago) had a careful, precise
summary of Clovis dates, along with corrections in them made by various
scholars. Her article found that the Clovis horizon has been dated too
early; it should be later: circa 11,000 BP.
Chimps Have the Brain for Syntax?
Normally we leave the hardware questions about human language origins to the LOS folks. We do a bit here and a dab there but not much systematically. In the new Journal, Issue III, we will do much more with our Symposium/Seminar or Round Table discussion of various theories of, basically, brain/mind and language. For the nonce there is an interesting new development which has caused a mild stir in the press. It's based on an article which appeared in SCIENCE 279:220-2 January 9, 1998. The title grabs you right away: "Asymmetry of Chimpanzee Planum Temporale: Humanlike Brain Pattern of Wernicke's Language Area Homolog". An isomorphic link between our close relatives and ourselves in one of the key language (function) areas of the brain. Wernicke's Area is famous as the area most likely to be associated with the ability to decode utterances and generate them to send to Broca's Area where they will be pronounced. If syntax has a home, Wernicke's Area is where it is at. [Note: Pennsylvania usage for where it is located -HF]
Author P.J.Gannon (Mount Sinai S.of M., New York), Ralph L. Holloway (Columbia U.), Douglas C. Broadbent (C.U.NY), and Allen R. Braun (N.I.D.O.C.D., Bethesda, MD) have this abstract: "The anatomical pattern and left hemisphere size predominance of the planum temporale, a language area of the human brain, are also present in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). The left planum temporale was significantly larger in 94 percent (17 of 18) of chimpanzee brains examined. It is widely accepted that the planum temporale is a key component of Wernicke's receptive language area, which is also implicated in human communication-related disorders such as schizophrenia and in normal variations such as musical talent. However, anatomic hemi-spheric asymmetry of this cerebrocortical site is clearly not unique to humans, as is currently thought. The evolutionary origin of human language may have been founded on this basal anatomic substrate, which was already lateralized to the left hemisphere in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans 8 million years ago."
Our colleague, Terrence Deacon advised
that this article not be published because the planum temporale is a red
herring; it misleads us. Many more of Terry's ideas will appear in the
Journal. For now, however, it is good to partake of the rich discussion
in the article. Quoting now: "... The most parsimonious assumption that
may be made, however, is that the PT was already lateralized anatomically
to the left hemisphere in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans
about 8 million years ago. Within this evolutionary scenario, however,
several distinct evolutionary hypotheses are embedded."
"First, that the asymmetric PT
in the common ancestor was unrelated to language or communicative functions
but later became coapted to subserve the unique form of human language.
Conversely, the PT did not evole a functional role in communication-related
tasks in the chimpanzee lineage and is currently involved with some other
function."
"Second, that the ancestral, asymmetric
PT was involved with communication-related functions, which then followed
disparate evolutionary trajectories during the subsequent differentiation
of the chimpanzee and human lineages. Because both of these discrete functional
trajectories were founded on a communication-related basal neural framework,
they gave rise to the unique and distinct forms of human and chimpanzee
'language' over the subsequent 8 million years. Within this hypothetical
framework, chimpanzees would possess the neural substrate for 'chimpanzee
language', which may be mediated through use of a subtle 'gestural-visual'
mode we have to understand better.. Many studies have supported this speculative
notion based on the extraordinary and diverse cognitive abilities and purported
prelinguistic capacities of chimpanzee.."
"Third, it may be that the PT was
never, and currently is not, related directly to language or communicative
functions in either humans.. or chimpanzees. Instead, the PT may be involved
with yet to be understood or tangential functions that are also localized
to the PT in the left hemisphere and that may even be common to both species.
This latter interpretation would characterize the PT in humans, a brain
region that current dogma mandates to be a key sub-strate for language
and other related functions, as an epiphenomenon."
"It is less likely that the PT
was symmetric in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees and then
became lateralized to the left hemisphere in both lineages independently,
because this would involve homoplasy, that is, separate evolutionary processes
acting in parallel. Furthermore, evidence from SF [Note: Sylvian fissure
-HF] length in another living hominoid species, the orangutan, which have
shared a common ancestor with humans around 12 million years ago, also
indicates that the PT was already asymmetric and lateralized to the left
hemisphere at this much earlier time point.. For this reason, it would
be instructive to further characterize this region in the closely related
bonobo (Pan paniscus) as well as the other great apes and lesser apes."
"Regardless of its putative functional
role in communication or language tasks, the anatomic substrate of the
PT appears to have had a long evolutionary history within the cerebral
cortex of at least hominoid primates. Whether the PT represents the functional
substrate of a species-specific communication-related behavior in chimpanzees
is currently not known. It has been suggested, however, that cognitive
and communicative abilities may have co-evolved during hominid evolution...Within
this theoretical framework, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the
PT (which was already asymmetric and likely modally equipotential in the
common ancestor) further evolved independently to subserve the species-speciic
repertoires that characterize human and chimpanzee communication and
cognition."
Brandt Criticizes Luca's HGHG
In a paper read at the annual meetings
of the American Anthropological Association this past Fall, Stephen Brandt
(U/Florida) took L.L. Cavalli-Sforza to task over putative deficiencies
in the giant book, called HGHG in our publications. Speaking as an archeologist
and Africanist, and a specialist in the Horn of Africa, Steve listed these
faults of Luca's giant opus: (1) HGHG used so-called populations which
differed greatly by content, as tribes, pooled ethnic groups, or groups
of languages. (2) HGHG chose 7 'populations' to represent the many different
groups found in the Horn, but not a good sample. Too much lumping. (3)
Cluster analysis produced some bloopers, like Somali & Khoisan! (4)
HGHG tries to explain intermediate position of Ethiopians between Near
Eastern and Negroid peoples by invoking Arab + Negroid migrants meeting
and mixing + resident Khoisaners (Bushmen) in Horn early. (5) Khoisan substrate
unacceptable; no archeology to back it up. (6) Bad business of racial labels.
Is a 50/50 Correlation Good?
In the long quiet discussion of
the correlation between genes and languages, or more properly biogenetic
taxonomies versus genetic taxonomies in linguistics, most of the evidence
has been supplied by Cavalli-Sforza or his students and/or colleagues.
Make no doubt about it -- this discussion is truly worth our while.
But one key question has become
salient: how much of an association is there between the two? Especially
when we already know that the null hypothesis (r = 0) is untenable because
too many cases of high correlation exist. And we know that r c 1.00 or
100%, proving false because there are too many cases of low correlation.
You want examples? Okay, Eskimo languages & genes is almost a case
of r = 1.0, yet English languages & genes is far from a case of r =
1.00, especially in North America. If we counted cases of pidgins &
creoles, we could bring it down to r = 0.02 or such.
We could turn the whole thing into
nitpicker's delight and hire a bunch of linguists to worry at the problem
for the next century. But the key question for prehistorians really is
the one posed by Luca and his colleagues. Thinking in larger genetic units
will tell us much more about prehistory than trying to find precision for
individual languages. Modern English links up with a remarkable heterogeneity
in bodies, but look at the taxon to which English belongs, as my father
put it: "a mass of flaxen-haired barbarians", the Teutonic peoples.
The latest effort to find out how workable it all is and to find some correlation to home in on has been made by a group of Latins at Musee de l'Homme/Geneva, Pavia, and Calabria. Twas a major article, appearing in AJHG 61:1015-35, 1997 and preceded by an invited editorial by Barbujani. The title: "Human Genetic Affinities for Y-Chromosome P49a,f/Taql Haplotypes Show Strong Correspondence with Linguistics". The authors were E.S.Poloni, O.Semino, G.Passarino, A.S. SantachiaraBenerecetti, I.Dupanloup, A.Langaney, and L. Excoffier. A strong and experienced group of scientists!
Their Summary: "Numerous population samples from around the world have been tested for Y chromosome-specific p49a,f /TaqI restriction polymorphisms. Here we review the literature as well as unpublished data on Y chromosome p49a,f/TaqI haplotypes and provide a new nomenclature unifying the notations used by different laboratories. We use this large data set to study worldwide genetic variability of human populations for this paternally transmitted chromosome segment. We observe, for the Y chromosome, an important level of population genetic structure among human populations (FààST = .230, P<.001), mainly due to genetic differences among distinct linguistic groups of populations (FCT = .246, P<.001).
A multivariate analysis based on
genetic distances between populations shows that human population structure
inferred from the Y chromosome corresponds broadly to language families
(r = .567, P<.001), in agreement with autosomal and mitochondrial data.
Times of divergence of linguistic families, estimated from their internal
level of genetic differentiation, are fairly concordant with current archeological
and linguistic hypotheses. Variability of the p49a,f/TaqI polymorphic marker
is also significantly correlated with the geographic location of the populations
(r = .613, P<.001), reflecting the fact that distinct linguistic groups
generally also occupy distinct geographic areas. Comparison of Y chromosome
and mtDNA RFLPs in a restricted set of populations shows a globally high
level of congruence, but it also allows identification of unequal maternal
and paternal contributions to the gene pool of several populations". [End
quote] I have received permission from AJHG to write a letter, protesting
some of their serious linguistic and prehistoric mistakes.
OBITUARY
A long ranger of considerable stature,
a contributer to glossogonics, and a fine anthropologist has died. Our
valued colleague, Gordon W.Hewes, has left a big hole in our ranks. Whether
someone can fill the empty space remains to be seen, but we can at least
mourn the loss and celebrate his life.
While Roger Wescott has written
two obituaries, to be published in other journals, we decided that it was
unseemly for us to copy what he wrote for them. Roger's eulogy of his good
friend can be found in ISCSC and LOS publications.
The following obituary was written by Duane Quiatt, Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado; (home address) 835, 7th Street, Boulder 80302, Colorado, USA :
"Gordon W.Hewes an anthropologist
whose interests embraced and extended well beyond anthropology's traditional
four subdisciplines (archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and physical
anthropology), died at age 80 in Boulder, Colorado on 22 November 1997.
Hewes, in his teaching as well as, more prominently, in his research and
writing, provided something like a one-man justification of anthropology's
claim as a 'holistic' approach to the scientific explanation of human behavior.
As scholar and scientist he was, in this respect, if not the only show
in town, certainly one of the main shows, and he will be sorely missed."
"Born in San Francisco on 29 October
1917, Hewes earned degrees in Anthropology (A.B.1938, Ph.D. 1947) at UC
Berkeley. His graduate education was interrupted by World War II, during
which he served in Washington, D.C. as geographer with the OSS and, for
a year, the Department of the Interior. This duty enabled him to renew
early interests in oriental studies and in Japanese and Chinese languages
and cultures, which developed into a continuing concern for the comparative
study of civilization (1959, 1961). In the last decades of his life Hewes
focused this interest on the 7th century, a period which he saw as of particular
importance for the rise and efflorescence of world religions, consequently
for cross-fertilization of culture elements linked with Buddhism, Islam,
and Christianity."
"Hewes's teachers at Berkeley included,
notably, Robert Lowie and A.L.Kroeber. His doctoral dissertation, a study
of pre- and post-contact fishing in native American populations of western
North America (1942), was based on both ethnological and archaeological
fieldwork, a combination less frequently observed in these days of specialty
training. Meticulously documented, in a manner that Hewes's colleagues
and students would come to recognize of his work, this early study continues
to provide baseline data for research on fisheries in the west."
"After the War Hewes taught for
short stints at the University of North Dakota (1946-49) and the University
of Southern California (1949-1951) before settling in, following a year
as Visiting Lecturer (1951-52), to a career of teaching at the University
of Colorado, Boulder, where he remained until retirement in 1988, with
continuing appointment thereafter of Professor Emeritus. It can hardly
be said, however, that Gordon Hewes 'remained' in any one place. He held
two appointments abroad as Fulbright Visiting Lecturer, in Japan (1955-56,
Keio University and Tokyo Kyoiku University) and in Peru (1960, University
of San Marcos, Lima); he served as Visiting Lecturer for shorter periods
at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (1968) and at International Christian
University, Mitaka, Tokyo (Summer, 1977); and he gave occasional lectures
at other universities while traveling in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania
and, of course, the Americas. Travel, always in company with his wife,
Minna, was an important part of Gordon Hewes's life. He was an enthusiastic
and a seasoned traveller. That noted, it must be emphasized that he was,
first of all, a broadly accomplished anthropologist who pursued anthropology
as an eclectic and a synthesizing discipline. The travel, then, was less
for sight-seeing than for site visits, ethnographic observations, linguistic
exercises, and comparative examination of, e.g., postural habits, gestural
communicative practices, and behavioral customs around the world -- as
well as, increasingly, scientific interchange with colleagues from other
lands and other disciplines at international congresses and symposia. Anthropology,
for many anthropologists, provides a fine excuse for travel. For Hewes,
more than for most, it constituted the essential reason."
"Hewes had directed field excavations
and archaeological surveys as a graduate student in California (1941) and,
subsequently, in archaeological field schools that he ran during summers
at the University of North Dakota (1949). In Colorado, he secured sponsorship
from the Department of State and the National Science Foundation for a
3-year project of archaeological excavations at Wadi Halfa, Republic of
Sudan, thus initiating the first of several salvage operations conducted
there by University of Colorado archaeologists, physical anthropologists,
and paleontologists. Hewes directed excavations in 1962-63 (1964) and was
instrumental in extending the project over seasons to follow. However,
around this time he began to concentrate his research and writing (thought
by no means exclusively) on issues of human biocultural evolution, issues
to which archaeological research was not as immediately important as was
integration of knowledge from physical anthropology, ethnology, linguistics,
neurobiology, primatology, and comparative studies of animal behavior more
generally."
"Chief among these issues is, of
course, the origin and evolution of language. His most recent publication,
"A History of the study of language origins and the gestural primacy hypothesis"
(1996), reviews a field of broadly interdisciplinary studies which Hewes
himself was in no small part responsible for reopening and developing for
serious scientific investigation, performing the necessary archival work
(1975) and setting standards of research and theory formulation (consistently
empirical and broadly synthetic) in a series of publications beginning
in the 1970s. Readers of Mother Tongue will be familiar with Gordon's work
in this area (e.g., 1973a,b, 1976, 1977, etc.), perhaps as well with earlier
papers that bear only less directly on the subject (e.g., 1955, 1961)."
"In short, we have lost a general anthropologist whose 200 publications
range widely and informatively across anthropology, linguistics, and other
scientific disciplines. Many of them constitute major integrative contributions
to knowledge, and not a few, particularly in the realm of language origins
theory, have proved foundational."
"Hewes is survived by his wife,
Minna Winestine Hewes, whom he married in 1939 and who proved a steady
companion and close intellectual confidante throughout his life. A celebration
of that life is in planning for Spring, 1998, by the Department of Anthropology,
University of Colorado."
"Contributions in Hewes's honor
can be made to: The Gorilla Foundation, P.O.Box 620-530, Woodside, CA 94062
or to Friends of Washoe, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA
98926."
References
Reconnaisance of the Central San
Joaquin Valley. American Antiquity 7:123-133.
Economic and geographical relations
of aboriginal fishing in Northern California. California Fish and Game
23(2): 13-110.
Burial mounds in the Baldhill area,
North Dakota. American Antiquity 14: 322-328.
World distribution of certain postural
habits. American Anthropologist 57: 231-234.
Food transport and the origin of
hominid bipedalism. American Anthropologist 63: 687-710.
World ethnographies and cultural-historical
syntheses. American Anthropologist 61: 615-630. 1961
The Ecumene as a civilization multiplier
system. Kroeber Memorial Volume, Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers,
No.25: 73-110. 1964 Gezira Dabarosa: Report of the University of Colorado
Nubian expedition. Kush (Khartoum) 12: 174-187. 1973a
An explicit formulation of the
relationship between tool-using, and the emergence of language. Visible
Language 7(2): 101-127. 1973b
Primate communication and the gestural
origin of language. Current Anthropology 14: 5-24.
Language origins: A bibliography.
The Hague. 2 vol., 2nd ed., rev.
The current status of the gestural
theory of language origins. In S.Harnad, H.Steklis, and J.Lancaster, eds.,
Origins and evolution of language and speech. pp.482-405 [sic]. Annals
of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol.80.
Language origin theories. In D.M.Rumbaugh,
ed., Language learning by a chimpanzee: The LANA project, pp.5-35 (Chapter
1).
A history of the study of language
origins and the gestural primacy hypothesis. In A. Lock and C. Peters,
eds.,Handbook of human symbolic evolution, pp.571-596. Oxford: Clarendon
Press."
[End of Quiatt's obituary of Gordon
W. Hewes]
We can publish some remarks Roger
Wescott made about Hewes in a personal letter in November, 1997. Quoting
now: "Dear Hal, A week ago, the International Society for the Comparative
Study of Civilizations, the Language Origins Society, and the Association
for the Study of Language in Prehistory lost one of their most valued members
-- Gordon Winant Hewes, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University
of Colorado in Boulder.
Since Gordon and I have been friends,
colleagues, and collaborators for nearly forty years, I will, with your
permission, submit a remembrance of his life and work to the editors of
ISCSC, LOS, and ASLIP publications. . . . . .Yours sincerely, Roger " [Only
a few technical details about format etc. were left out - HF].
Also, in a later letter, Roger reports: "Minna tells me that the Smithsonian
funded a 1964 expedition to Tunisia."
This obituary may reappear in JRAI
(U.K.).
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NEWS OF OFFICERS' ACTIVITIES,
INCLUDING A CONFERENCE
A workshop or conference was held
at the Santa Fe Institute in the city of said name in the state of New
Mexico in December. Co-sponsored by Murray Gell-Mann and Merritt Ruhlen,
the workshop was called "The Arrows of Time", an apt term for contemplating
entities which persist through time.
We go directly to two perceptions
of the workshop, John Bengtson's and Hal Fleming's. Since John's is more
descriptive of the total scene, we start with that.
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ARROWS OF TIME
A Conference at Santa Fe, December
1997 by John D. Bengtson
There was snow on the ground, a
nip in the air, and clear blue skies the three days we gathered at the
Santa Fe Institute for the workshop "Arrows of Time and Founder Effects
in Language Evolution." The Institute buildings lie on a slope of the Sangre
de Cristo hills, overlooking the old city of Santa Fe in the valley. Northern
New Mexico is of interest to linguists as a region of long-standing linguistic
diversity. Four of Greenberg's major families are represented: the Amerind
families of AlmosanKeresiouan (Keres), Penutian (Zuni), and Kiowa-Tanoan
(Tewa, Tiwa, etc.) and the more divergent Na-Dene (Navajo, Apache). Santa
Fe itself is in Tewa territory, but the hotel we stayed in is owned by
the Tiwa-speaking Picuris Pueblo.
Our host, Nobel Physicist Murray
Gell-Mann, charged us with the following ideas as stimuli:
(a) Many features of known human
languages, and the history of their evolution (as far as we can reconstruct
it), may exhibit trends that go forward in time, and not backward.
(b) Furthermore, the origin of
such languages may be sufficiently recent (say, less than 100,000 years
ago) that significant characteristics of the original ancestral language
(or languages) may be recoverable, through detectable influences (founder
effects) that they still exert.
(c) One should take seriously the
attempts to classify languages into "super-families" with great time depth,
and to learn something about the corresponding proto-languages. ASLIP/Mother
Tongue was well represented at the workshop, with Founding Father Hal ("Father
Tongue") Fleming, former ASLIP Vice-President Allan R. Bomhard, current
President John D. Bengtson; ASLIP Council Fellows Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Stanford),
Aharon Dolgopolsky (Haifa), and Sergei Starostin (Moscow); and others such
as long-time ASLIP booster Merritt Ruhlen (Palo Alto), linguist William
S-Y. Wang (Hong Kong), and geneticist Stephen Zegura (Tucson).
Discussions were frequently spirited
and vigorous. Here are some of my impressions from the workshop, by way
of my very personal reality filter:
Fleming: There is a major dichotomy
in current approaches to language origins and evolution: (a) "The Deductive
Way," dominated by neuro-anatomy, some linguistics (mostly synchronic,
Transformational-Generative), evolutionary psychology, and the "hardware"
of language; and (b) "The Inductive Way," associated with historical linguistics
and paleo-linguistics, archaeology, biogenetics, and the "software" of
language. The (a) group or school is mainly associated with the Language
Origins Society (LOS), the (b) school with the Association for the Study
of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP), though of course there is some overlap
of the two memberships.
Ruhlen: "The Emerging Synthesis"
(mainly group 'b' in Fleming's analysis) is leading to the insight that
there was a very significant event or transition around 40,000 to 60,000
years ago, which is most clearly seen in stone tools. Something happened
to dramatically alter the "style" of human activity, and that event was
probably the development of modern language -- "Mother Tongue". Only because
the event was so recent, we can still find traces of this Mother Tongue
in modern and recorded languages.
Wang: Besides the dichotomy between
"Apollonians" (logical, analytical, dispassionate) and the "Dionysians"
(intuitive, synthetic, passionate), there can be a third way, the "Odysseans,
combining the best from both ways in the quest for new ideas.
Dolgopolsky: Opposes the separation
of Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic), Kartvelian and Dravidian from the rest
of Nostratic. In response to Ruhlen & Greenberg's "Euroasiatic Cognates,"
Dolgopolsky provided a list of proposed cognates aiming to show that "Eurasiatic"
words are found in the other three families as well. Bomhard: Outlined
his current findings on the dispersal of Nostratic languages, the later
dispersals of Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European, and their interrelationships
with the spread of agriculture.
Bengtson: Offered results of recent
research on the Dene-Caucasian macro-family; morphological and lexical.
Starostin: Presented his remarkable
STARLING computer program for organizing lexical material. Starostin has
also masses of his own lexical collections available on the Internet: Altaic,
Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, etc. For more information, check the web at [starling.rinet.ru]
or e-mail at [starling@rinet.ru].
In sum, I thought this was a very
valuable workshop. It assembled a good representation of different views
on approaches to linguistic prehistory. Like Rice University (1986) and
Ann Arbor (1988), this was a meeting that will produce results for many
years to come.
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Fleming wrote a letter to many of
the participants and some others to test their agreement with a scheme
he had worked out. Nobody responded, save Merritt Ruhlen, and he disagreed
with most of the ideas. So this scheme represents an unsupported but once
opposed way of looking at the participants of ASLIP type at the conference
plus some salient other types from the world of historical linguistics
at large.
He presents it here in order to
get some feedback, in the belief that this scheme stands close to the truth
about the strategies and tactics of us 'software' types. In brief, it is
a kind of epistemological analysis, aimed at basic assumptions, things
stressed, things neglected or scorned.
Dramatis personae are: Joseph
Greenberg (JHG), Merritt Ruhlen (MR), Aharon Dolgopolsky (AD), Sergei Starostin
(SS), John D.Bengtson (JDB and Allan R. Bomhard (ARB). These acronyms are
to help identify ourselves on the chart below. In addition we throw in
Hal Fleming (HF), Marvin Lionel Bender (MLB), Paul K. Benedict (PK), Morris
Swadesh (MS), Edward Sapir (ES), your average Americanist (YAAM), your
typical Indo-Europeanist (YTIE), and typical Afrasianists of the 1970s
(TAA) who contrast sharply with the Muscovite school. Isidor Dyen &
Paul Black are (Dyen). The severe enemies of JHG are Campbell, Kaufman,
and Goddard (CKG).
The chart which follows is an effort
to segregate and separate the basic epistemic approaches of the several
kinds of long rangers and some other varieties of historical linguists.
No scheme is championed here, least of all HF's which is atypical. Rather
we seek to mark out more clearly the similarities and differences among
us and others to help find the bases of our conflicts with each other and
with the nincompoop linguists.
The left-right dimension or abscissa
(symbol x) shows the regular use, or willingness to use, lexicostatistics
and beyond that glottochronology, entirely lexicon-based cognate counts.
The difference between the two, now partly established in American usage,
is not accepted by the Muscovites -- apparently. Or at least that became
evident in discussions with SS. So, on the extreme left there is no use
of lexicostatistics, while on the extreme right there is full use of both
techniques.
The up-down dimension or ordinate
(symbol y) shows the preference for reconstruction and/or strict sound
laws, as opposed to a preference for taxonomy, classification before reconstruction.
Now there is another dimension which we cannot get on the chart which would
show a marked preference for grammatical/morphological evidence as opposed
to lexical. Most Semiticists and many Aryanologists would be affected by
this additional factor. In order to use it at all we put it on the y-axis
as a mid point between taxonomy and reconstruction.
Just to keep the record straight.
Although some colleagues have implied that they thought of it first, HF
invented the dichotomy of "taxonomy versus reconstruction" in 1987 after
the Michigan conference. Twas published in MOTHER TONGUE too, 1987. That
is not satisfactory, as you know, but it may be useful. There is a difference
between most Semiticists and most Americanists. Let Robert Hetzron (HETZ)
stand for the Semiticist dominant tendency. Ehret stands for Christopher
Ehret of U.C.L.A.
The two dimensions which govern
the chart do not cover one most important attribute of us 8 long rangers,
to wit, boldness & courage. (Choose whichever you prefer). The dimensions
on the chart do not, therefore, cover the thing which most separates long
rangers from short rangers. Moreover, the absence of boldness as a dimension
distorts Dolgopolsky's true position, as Ruhlen pointed out, which is much
closer to JHG. There are some surprises, if there is truth in the
chart. (1) Aharon is quite distinct from other long rangers but much like
JHG's enemies. (2) PK came out close to Sapir, his teacher; both scored
high on the ordinate because they were taxonomic innovators but did want
sound correspondences. (3) Allan and John are close yet this derives from
different influences; the one from YTIE and the other from the Muscovites.
(4) HF and MLB show the intersecting influences of JHG, MS, and Dyen. (5)
TAA may surprise you. Few Afrasianists used Indo-European methods in the
1970s; AD came as a surprise to most of them and was resisted by Semiticists!
(6) JHG should be even closer to Sapir because of their strong mutual respect
for grammatical analyses. (7) Ehret used ad hoc glottochronology, not Swadesh's.
A ROUGH EPISTEMIC ARRAY OF HISTORICAL LINGUISTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
@@ TABLE TO BE ADDED @@ _________________________
No! < - - - Lexicostatistics
+/- Glottochronology - - - > Yes! Everyone knows
that this is not a picture of God's Truth, but let us see how much agreement
we can get on the general outlines. Some fascinating things can also
be reported. Perhaps first to mention was the marked moiety division of
the workshop into the Dionysian seeming historical linguists on a side
of a great table and the Apollonian natural science types on the other
side. AD exemplified the passion of the historian side, although HF and
SS contributed significant amounts of that marvelous substance from time
to time. But the cool high-tech folks showed an ability to generate passion,
especially in Zegura's astute critique of the remarkable ways in which
historical linguists approached problems. But most frequently the natural
scientist cum mathematician sorts were confused, oft dumbfounded, by how
the inductive, highly empirical heads on our side of the table worked.
It was like C.P.Snow's Two Cultures, except that our side objected, and
yes passionately, that we were scientists. At one point AD and SS angrily
insisted that the high-tech folks quit trying to run 'our science'.
The whole experience could not
have failed to impress an ethnographer or some 'neutral' observer that
this was not a homogeneous group of scientists -- at a minimum -- and that
with patience and good will some would come to appreciate the others' results
and the strange ways their heads worked. Some would not, thus departing
scornful of the other side.
It should also be reported that
the American long rangers, or at least HF, were most impressed with the
high intelligence and remarkable memory for data, including fast retrieval,
displayed by the two Russians, AD and SS. Other long rangers will appreciate
that much mending of fences took place too. Not just good will. Both Muscovites
are back in ASLIP again. Together we are stronger now. It has been a long
decade waiting to regain what we started out with in 1986. Our ain wee
Cold War did indeed wound us! A good time was had by all. Thank you, Murray
and Merritt!
THE MEMBERSHIP (PUBLICATION PERMITTED LIST
Professor Dr. Giorgio Banti wished
to make sure that his name was added to the 'Permitted' list. Accidentally,
he had not been listed before. His Roman address is: Giorgio Banti, Vile
del Vignola 73, 00196 Roma, Italy.