http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html
In a partial return to our old customs ASLIP will be producing occasional small newsletters on topics which are not usually covered in MOTHER TONGUE: THE JOURNAL and which are not original contributions like those which appear as articles in the Journal. We offer up three such small reports which are meant to stimulate responses or reactions which may guide us in future mini-newsletters. Tell us how you like the format and topic!
July
2003.
Just
a little less than seventeen years ago we began our journey to the sources of Homo
sapiens sapiens or Homo
loquax. Upon exposure to the excited
young linguists of Moscow (summer 1986), I wrote my own excitement to my
friend, Aharon Dolgopolsky, and invited 80 other people to listen in. Soon
Aharon and I started a club, the Long Range Comparison Club, which quickly
evolved into the Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory and which
periodically produced a newsletter called MOTHER TONGUE. Right from the start
we were affected by the excitement generated by the paleoanthropological work
of Chris Stringer and his many colleagues who were generating the OUT OF AFRICA
hypothesis of anatomically modern human origins. A solid base in fossils and
dated sites and traditional physical anthropology anchored that whole bit.
Simultaneously, or virtually so, Rebecca Cann and her colleagues (mostly
Californians) gave a tremendous leg up to the OUT OF AFRICA hypothesis when
they did a world-wide survey of mitochondrial DNA and concluded that the
Africans were not only the most diverse group of modern humans but they also
showed signs of being (technically) the African STAY-AT-HOMES. The dominant
African clusters of Pigmies, Bushmen, mainline Negroes, and Ethiopians could
not be derived from each other, yet everybody in the rest of the world seemed
to be derived from Africa and had greater affinities to mainline Negroes and
Ethiopians than to Pigmies and Bushmen who looked to be the most divergent folk
on Earth.
Charles
Darwin himself had anticipated that Africa would probably turn out to be the
homeland of mankind, meaning modern man, of course, since barely any of our
ancestors were known to him It would be interesting to follow his reasoning on
this score but I have not yet been motivated enough to go look up the source
and read it. In modern times Rebecca Cann’s thesis was advanced perhaps
in a less powerful way by geneticists and physical anthropologists, most
saliently by Cavalli-Sforza well before he and his colleagues produced their
gigantic HGHG book and indeed before Becky Cann’s hypothesis was first
presented.
Opposed
to this OUT OF AFRICA hypothesis was the perfectly reasonable alternative that
modern man did not originate in any one place and spread around the world.
Indeed a strong anti-migration ideology in archeology also inhibited world-wide
expansions. There was no Garden of Eden except in Christian mythology. In the
1970s and 1980s, teaching basic anthropology and examining textbooks for
classes, I noticed several things. First, there was quite strong opinion that
Neanderthal was in our family tree, that Europeans at least if not much of the
rest of mankind had Neanderthal as the last ancestral stage before Cro-Magnon
and ourselves. Many anthropologists vigorously attacked the stereotype of
Neanderthal the brute, the dummy, the savage who was knocked off by tall
handsome Cro-Magnons. Secondly, the evidence kept mounting that varieties of
Homo erectus lived in much of the Old World before Homo sapiens sprang up
there. Again the strong bias against migrations in archeology affected everyone
else, so that there was a kind of supposition that local invention was
preferable to diffusion and local development was preferable to migration from
the outside. One heard frequently that, if mankind had a homeland, it was
probably in Central Asia, a convenient place about which little was known.
Moreover there was a major and respected intellectual
tradition in physical anthropology that favored local invention or native
(autochthonous) evolution. In the 1960s Carleton Coon had published his ORIGIN
OF RACES and later THE LIVING RACES OF MAN. Their main thrust was to show that
groups established in Homo erectus’ realm plus Neanderthal in Europe were
the bases for the geographical varieties of modern man more or less associated
with various regions of the world. In this Coon continued or confirmed the
hypotheses first ventured by Franz Weidenreich among others in the 1940s.
Despite the book titles, Coon was playing down rigid categories of race without
actually abandoning them because a powerful movement was afoot in physical
anthropology to dispense with the concept of race altogether.
The cognitive descendant of the Weidenreich-Coon
theory, albeit modified and not claiming descent, has been called the
“multiregional hypothesis” whose principal proponent in fossil
studies has been Milton Wolpoff (Michigan) and Alex Templeton in genetics (Utah). Both have routinely challenged
new discoveries and conclusions of the OUT OF AFRICA school, while each seems
to have fewer and fewer followers per year. For example, last October I sat in
a room at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with 100 or so geneticists and
paleoanthropologists when one speaker stated that he wished to know, so that he
might do justice to the controversy, if there were any present who believed in
“multiregionalism”. If there were, we might discuss the problem. No
one rose to defend “multiregionalism”. No one raised a hand to show
that he was at least in favor of that theory. I was impressed.
One serious problem adhered to both theories of Homo
sapiens and his distribution. The problem of the physical unity of mankind.
Along with the psychic unity of mankind espoused by most anthropologists the
simple fact was that from one end of the globe to the other human beings were
one intra-breeding species; they could and they did breed with each other. Sailors had always known this. The key
solution to the theories of Weidenreich, Coon, and their modern followers was
GENE FLOW. That was the mechanism by which `evolutionary grade changes’
could be passed around the species, enabling all varieties in all regions to
advance together at least in physique, if not in culture or language. Even
though the general theory seemed to freeze races into their regions and their
differences, still it was egalitarian in its presumption that all peoples of
the world were equally human. From Pigmies and Bushmen to Australian aborigines
to Eskimo hunters nobody was primitive or backward physically, even if their
cultures sometimes were pictured as primitive. Oddly enough, except in central
Europe, the idea of primitive languages never caught on among linguists.
In the years since we started there has been much
resolution of the two basic hypotheses. We are approaching a final decision on
the veracity of each one. Except for the settlement of the Homo loquax
question, we are almost finished in writing the history of our species in broad
outline. Recently two research reports in major scientific journals have nearly
sealed the fate of the “multiregional hypothesis” and nearly
proclaimed the victory of the OUT OF AFRICA hypothesis. Let’s see what
happened.
Writing in SCIENCE, a group of Italian geneticists presented data and
analysis which said two important things. First, Neanderthal DNA again
indicated that the Neanderthals were quite distinct from all or any modern
human populations in mtDNA (at least). Second, the near contemporaries of
Neanderthal, namely Cro-Magnon (in this case of Italy), were very much within
the range or central tendency of modern humans. In short Cro-Magnon was simply
a modern human in DNA, while Neanderthal was not. This confirmed the view from
fossil studies which had always maintained that Cro-Magnon represented modern
human beings, while Neanderthal was something else, possibly distantly
ancestral to moderns and possibly an offshoot of a much more remote common
ancestor. Some anthropologists objected to the Italian study on the grounds
that the Cro-Magnon DNA had been contaminated by the DNA exuded (?) by the
modern human lab personnel. Some said it was impossible to ever solve this
problem. Most of the protests seemed like die hards grasping at straws, or
anything to protect their hypotheses. My own reaction was that the protesters
represented the degree of dishonesty evoked by losing a long hard debate.
Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, that their favorite theory was kaput.
What put the rest of the nails in the coffin of Weidenreich-Coon theory
was another important fossil find. This one was in Ethiopia in the same region
(Afar) which had produced Lucy of global renown. The field workers were even
the same or at least some of them were, especially Tim White who must be one of
the luckiest fossil hunters in existence. His intelligent preparation and
search in the designated region was not luck, of course, but planning. But the
actual site was chanced upon because of a rain storm. They practically tripped
over the skull of their fossil in an area they would have overlooked or delayed
examining.
The archeological content was described thusly: “The
archeological assemblages contain elements of both Acheulean and Middle Stone
Age technocomplexes. Associated faunal remains indicate repeated, systematic
butchery of hippopotamus carcasses. Contemporary adult and juvenile Homo
sapiens fossil crania manifest bone modifications indicative of deliberate
mortuary practices.” Three quick comments. The African Middle Stone Age
as the general `complex’ had
its European counterpart in the Mousterian in which Qahzeh was later found but
it was also generally associated with Neanderthal. These are typologically
intermediate between the earlier hand-axe and later blade `complexes’
(traditions). The hunting of hippos is still practiced by several tribes in the
Ethiopian lakes and by the El Molo of Lake Rudolf (Turkana) in Kenya.
Theoretically, one could argue that the mortuary practices are indicative of
cannibalism, even if the site report thinks otherwise. The `whatever
for?’ question naturally arises but there is ethnographic evidence of
such mortuary practices, they say.
The proportions of the various tool types may shed some light. For
example, there were some hand axes but most tools were not those. A very
diagnostic technique, I’m told, was the Levallois method of flaking; that
was common. There were blades too, but they were not common. Mostly we’re
talking about flakes in this culture. But also, given the hunting tools of the
modern hippo hunters of Lake Margarita (Abbaya) in Ethiopia, it is possible to
kill hippos with fire-hardened spears, i.e., no hafted stone or metal points.
Since hippos are very large and very dangerous beasts, hunting technique
includes a great deal of skill at sneaking up on them and stabbing them when they
are vulnerable. Or so I was told by the Ganjule of Lake Chamo who practice
hippo hunting. (Oddly enough, contrary to `rational’ expectations, the
Ganjule venerate or worship crocodiles!)
Tim White and his colleagues found that Herto man was not quite modern
human, but almost, and at a date and location that powerfully suggested that
this almost modern human was most likely to be the ancestor of all modern
humans, including those found in eastern Africa around 125 kya and those found
in Israel around 90-110 kya and the Cro-Magnon themselves of Europe of 25-40
kya. We now had an increasingly clear descent line or evolutionary progression
from Homo sapiens idaltu (the man
of Herto in Afar) via Omo Kibish (Gemu-Gofa, Ethiopia), Jebel Irhoud (Morocco)
to Qafzeh (Israel) to Cro-Magnon to ourselves. But, since we had a line of
modern human ancestors stretching back 120,000 years before Cro-Magnon or at
least humans who looked a great deal like our probable ancestors, then it
became very hard to believe that Neanderthals of that same period were our
ancestors or even our closest cousins. Our line was distinct from the
Neanderthal line and had been for quite a long time.
More precisely, in the Middle Awash valley of northeast Ethiopia in the
territory of the Afar (Afar to the linguists) there is progression of sites
with genus Homo skeletons from
1,000,000 (Daka) to 500,000 (Bodo) to 160,000 (Herto) years ago. That is not
the same as finding one stratified site with that range of dates but it is
still very arresting! That progression is also not quite the same as the
evident series of anatomical changes which can be inferred from the larger
African distribution of genus Homo
over a million years. Thus the anatomical progression or evolutionary grade
changes (if you will) from early genus Homo (or early Archaic Homo) to early Homo sapiens sapiens (Qahzeh) can be found in various parts of Africa,
although mostly in the east.
To put it another way, the Middle Awash valley has better preserved the
record of changes taking place over the wider area of eastern Africa than any
other region. Clearly not all the changes took place in northeastern Ethiopia.
Nor can environmental conditions in northeastern Ethiopia be cited as
determinative or causative, since people were evidently moving around,
circulating over the variable terrains of eastern Africa. The people who ended
up living around Herto may have arrived there from Kenya many years before.
This is an important part of the prehistoric record that we don’t know
about yet.
And for this reason Chris Stringer has raised the possibility of a kind
of “multiregionalism” within Africa where genetic changes or
mutations first occur in (for example) West Africa and spread from there, while
other changes occurring first in (for example) Zambia spread from there. The
resultant of the convention or
merging of various mutations would be newer and newer versions of Homo, culminating in WHO? The process is still going on and
human populations are still passing genes around. Naturally, given the greater
mobility of people in the past half millennium gene pools long separated or marginal to each other have been
thrown together to create distinctive new kinds of humans, like
African-Americans, Latinos, or Hawaians. Or Tiger Wood.
Another statement by the excavators is important (p.744): “Among
the global sample of modern humans {that were examined – Ed.}, the Herto
crania, both metrically and non-metrically, lack any derived affinity with
modern African crania or with any other modern group, confirming earlier
suggestions {fn11-Ed.}. Instead, the closest approximations among modern
individuals to the overall morphology , size, and facial robusticity are found in some Australian and
Oceanic individuals, although these are also clearly distinct from the Herto
hominids.” This has been found before by Marta Lahr and Robert Foley and
bears to be repeated. An old fossil from Ethiopia is not directly ancestral to
Ethiopians, not the same as them in appearance, and not necessarily living in
the place that they came from. Not necessarily.
Further details about the anatomy of the three skeletons at Herto and
the site itself and its archeological content can be found in SOURCES. Suffice
it for now to list some of the other sites and their dates to help the reader
in her research. These sites are not uniformly revealing so their deficiencies
and more helpful traits are not listed.
Nariokotome Kenya 1.6
mya H.
erectus / H.ergaster. Turkana boy
Daka Afar,
Ethiopia 1
mya H.
erectus
Bodo Afar,
Ethiopia 500
kya H.
heidelbergensis
Kabwe Zambia 125
or 250 kya H.
rhodesiensis, H.erectus/sapiens
Kapthurin / Baringo, Kenya 230 kya Mandibles
& limbs only
Herto Afar,
Ethiopia 160
kya H.
sapiens idaltu
Florisbad South
Africa 38-41 kya Disputed
taxon. H.helmei, H.sapiens?
Ngaloba Tanzania (Cannot
find the primary sources.)
Singa Sudan “ “ “ “
“
Eliye Springs Kenya ( “
“
“
“
“
)
Border Cave1 South
Africa 49-115 kya Much disputed
dates, sapiens
Omo Kibish Ethiopia 3
to 125 kya Most like
Herto. Also called Omo I
Jebel Irhoud Morocco 125
kya ? Most
like Herto. Also Jebel Ighoud.
Qafzeh Israel 90-115
kya Most
like Herto
Skhul Israel same
? Most
like Herto
Cro-Magnon many
sites in Europe 25-40 kya Us
= anatomically modern man.
Chris Stringer drew a more formal chart of the longer term human
descent lines (in his OUT OF ETHIOPIA article), going back basically to the two
million year mark and the advent of genus Homo. The world is divided into three
primary regions. The taxonomy reflects two different schemes, not necessarily
tied to any one scholar.
Scheme A has Homo
erectus ancestral to all and found in
Africa almost 2 mya.
They persist steadily in Africa until roughly 900 kya. During their
long African residence they also bud off settlements to Asia early on, i.e.
circa 1.7 mya. Their Asian cohort persists longer than the African one until
circa 100 kya or the advent of modern man. Homo erectus may have gone to Europe 1.1 mya and 0.9 mya but there
is a question about this on the chart.
Meanwhile in Africa Homo erectus turns into, becomes, Homo heidelbergensis around 850 kya and fairly quickly invades Europe.
They possibly invade Asia between 500 kya and 250 kya but that is also
questionable. More importantly, they (H.h.) evolve into Homo
neanderthalensis in Europe around 375
kya and also stay in Africa to evolve into Homo sapiens around 200 kya. Thereafter Homo sapiens expands in Africa and around 100 kya begins their
conquest of the world, in the process eliminating Neanderthal in Europe and
whatever late Homo erectus were present in Asia.
Scheme B is fundamentally
similar to Scheme A in Asia but different in Africa and Europe. Homo erectus starts out in Africa at the same date as in Scheme A
, then moves to Asia about 1.8 mya (to accommodate some very old dates from
Indonesia and Georgia), then leaves Asia apparently circa 1.6 mya only to
return maybe 20,000 years later, there to persist until the advent of Homo
sapiens in the last 100,000 years.
However, in Africa Homo erectus evolves into Homo antecessor/Mauritanicus which persists in Africa and extends into Europe from
1.2 mya to 0.8 mya. Then comes a crucial point, looking for all the world like
a bottle-neck, around 0.7 mya or 700, 000 years ago on the borders of Africa
and Europe. At this point they change into Homo rhodesiensis which comes to dominate Africa and extend briefly
into Asia. The Asian intrusion dates from 600 kya to 300 kya when it expires.
It is also associated with a question mark. The European invasion 0.7 mya
onwards leads to the development of Homo neanderthalensis which persists in Europe until the coming of
Cro-Magnon. Meanwhile in Africa, Rhodesian man, so-called, evolves into Homo
sapiens around 200 kya and follows the same scenario of world
conquest as outlined in Scheme A.
There are two other details about these schemes which it is useful to
mention. Homo antecessor (which
was earlier reported in MOTHER TONGUE) is the only West African contribution to
the family tree. And in the naming of Neanderthal’s taxon, many
paleoanthropologists prefer to call them Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. By this reckoning Homo sapiens had two distinct descent lines developing by 500,000
years ago. This would suggest that Homo sapiens is not such a young species. The other question would
pertain to Homo erectus in Asia.
How come, after living in the world’s largest continent with a wide range
of environmental conditions for more than a million years, Homo erectus did not
evolve into one or two other species? It is hard to believe that H.e. of say
1.5 mya in Arabia had not evolved into something quite different in say 0,5 mya
in Java.
What about Homo loquax?
How does he fit into these fossil schemes? Man the talkative. That is a goodly
label for our species, as chattering as magpies or parrots, far more inclined
to jabber than mongooses or chipmunks, but blessed with an enormous
capacity to internalize this talk
and connect it to our cognition, as proposed by Vigotsky. This reminds me of a
story told by my friend Willard Park who was working with an ancient shaman
(Paiute, methinks) via an interpreter. Willard asked the old man if his tribe
ever followed a particular custom. The ancient one leaned forward and spoke
eloquently for half an hour in response to the question. So what did he say,
asked Willard of the interpreter. He said `yes’, was the answer. Very
disappointed was my friend who did, however, learn that English might not be
the vehicle for probing the complexity of shamanly thought.
Was Homo sapiens the one
who initiated our jabbering? Was Neanderthal a strong silent type or did he
pioneer a crude or impoverished version of language? Over the years these questions have been
addressed in several ways. Overall, however, there seem to be two basic
approaches. One has been called the hardware approach before, i.e., an effort to understand the human
brain, its evolution and relationship to the evolving `machinery’ of
sound production and breathing and drinking, and evidence to be inferred from
various fossils about the hardware. This approach has attracted those who
follow the physics model, looking for variables and generating hypotheses
about the condition of the hardware at various periods, mostly the
`beginning’. The adherents have tended to be the more theoretically
inclined linguists, as well as anatomists, psychologists, and
paleo-anthropologists. It is probably fair to say that this group has evoked
far more interest among social scientists, has produced a great number of
untested or unconfirmed hypotheses, and has reached no great amount of
agreement on what happened.
The second group can be called the historical or prehistorical
approach. Dominated by the basic
viewpoints and techniques of traditional historical linguistics, it has been
aimed at achieving the two primary products of that field, i.e., reconstruction
of earlier languages and taxonomy or classification of languages into genetic
groups. Since the notion of primitiveness finds little support in this
approach, the goals of research have been conceived of as regular languages
which were themselves parents to later languages but themselves also daughters
of earlier languages. Nothing extraordinary is expected, i.e., any language at
the parental level was still expected to be within the range of known languages
in grammar and phonology. However the normal expectation did not extend to the
lexicon where no one expected ancestral vocabularies to be as full of cultural
things as modern vocabularies are. Moreover, given fundamental changes in
society and culture over time, the contents of cultural vocabulary could be
quite different between ancestor and offspring. Witness, for example, Latin of
Caesar’s time and modern French.
The two approaches differ in other ways too. Their empirical bases are
very different, their `popularity’ is very unequal, and their methods of
dating ancestors are wholly separate. The hardware school draws on the rich
data of paleoanthropology,
anatomy, neurology, psychology, evolutionary biology and general
linguistics; it draws upon the analyses and theories of those fields to help in
solving the puzzle of human speech and its origins. But it uses little specific
data from the 5000 plus known languages. The historical school draws heavily
upon the specific language data. It uses little theory outside of that
associated with historical linguistics. In a word one approach is highly
theoretical, while its counterpart is highly empirical. The hardware approach
is probably much more popular with both the general public and the scientific
public than is the historical approach. I cannot prove this, having taken no
surveys, but that seems to be our experience of the past two decades. A general
reader can understand, for example, the arguments for and against Neanderthal
language easier than she can the proofs that proto-Indo-European was
glottalized or not or the genetic links between Basque and Burushaski. Eyes
tend to glaze over and nap time approach when most scientists are confronted
with the specific empirical arguments so beloved of the historical school. Not
to mention the intelligent educated general public. What these publics do
understand are the conclusions that the historical school reaches but those
have to be taken on faith for the most part. And, when two `authorities’
disagree with each other, the general public is lost, as is the scientific
public for the most part.
For dating – a most important aspect of archeological and
paleoanthropological work – the hardware school has few problems because
they use whatever the fossil folk give them. For the most part the dates are
grounded in Homo sapiens or
Neanderthal specifics. For the historical school dating problems are endemic
and severe. Part of the problem lies in a growing contemporary reluctance to
investigate linguistic taxa of any appreciable age at all. Six thousand years
or ten thousand years are the usual cut off dates given nowadays by the
dominant historical linguists in the USA.
Other problems arise for the small minority of linguists and
anthropologists who do `long range’ comparisons. The specific problematic
nub is glottochronology. Very strong disagreements have arisen between the
Russian school and one American scholar (c’est moi) about what time depths
can be reached and how to reckon the data and chronologies involved. Had this
discussion taken place 35 years ago we might have spoken of an American school
but so thoroughly did American linguistics pursue and seek to destroy
glottochronology that rare indeed are the Americans who do glottochronology
nowadays. In effect the historical school has no means of calculating the deep
time depths needed to reach the origins of Homo loquax. So, if linguists manage to do the final taxonomy of
the human language set and create at least the outlines of a final ancestor to
be called proto-Human, they will
only be able to date it by arbitrary association with some archeological
culture or horizon. In the great discussion of when the human diaspora left Africa to settle the world the undated
linguistic proto-languages will be next to useless, even though the possession
of human language must have been a crucial part of the human diaspora. (In the
forthcoming issue of MOTHER TONGUE: THE JOURNAL there will be a long report on
a debate in Washington among archeologists about the dates of the great
diaspora; language was not important during that discussion and it seems clear
that the other sciences have decided to settle these questions without much
input from historical linguistics.)
Nevertheless, the historical school is not really limited by the fears
of contemporary linguists. It has a small number of competent and dedicated
scholars who know how to generate taxonomies, deep or shallow, which can reach
`all the way’ back. This is because taxonomy does not depend on time or
superficial conclusions due to misunderstanding glottochronology (the bases of
the fears of linguists). If you compare two languages –binarism, you know
– which have been separated in all probability from each other for sixty
or seventy thousand years, you expect to find next to nothing in common in the
lexicon. Take Siwai, an Indo-Pacific tongue spoken on Bougainville in the
Solomon Islands (well into the Pacific) , and line it up against Vai, a Mande
language spoken in Liberia (West African coast). They would surely share a few
loan words from English and French derived from their colonial histories or
those of their neighbors. But not much else. And this is the point where most
of contemporary linguistics is hung up – an inability to think outside of
the bounds of binarism. They are trapped in a fable of their own
invention!! When they finally
figure out that they can actually break out of their own chronological
barriers, they will naturally claim that they solved the problem themselves. Is
it possible that they haven’t heard the rest of us telling them how to do
it? Io non credo. Das glaube ich nicht.
They are lucky in a way because genetic taxonomy is something that the
hardware folks do not do and probably can not do because they don’t know
how to. Nor do they care to.
Joseph Greenberg long ago spelled out how to proceed; it is all on
record and we have discussed it for many years now. To illustrate – let
us go back to Siwai and Vai where we have no reasonable hope of finding any
genuine cognates at all. So what then? This is not at all the same as saying
that Siwai and Vai cannot be related. Siwai is member of a large phylum of more
than 700 languages, including 23 in Siwai’s own branch (East Papuan). Vai belongs to Niger-Congo, the largest
phylum in the world with about 1100 languages, including the 29 in the Mande
sub-phylum. Who is willing to say that we are unlikely to find genuine cognates
when we compare 20 East Papuan to 20 Mande languages? Fewer will be nay-sayers
here. But, when we compare 100 Papuan to 100 Niger-Congo languages, the
nay-sayers will surely become a minority because “the odds” keep
going up. Indeed just 20 languages, when compared in basic vocabulary, should
show about 22 cognates after 20,000 years according to calculations
incorporating the so-called “Joos factor” (Greenberg’s
Amerind book, page 342). And 80 languages after 40,000 years should show about
30 cognates on a Swadesh list. Of course that does not mean you cannot find
more than that amongst these languages because many cognates exist in other
parts of the vocabulary, not to mention grammatical morphemes some of which are
phenomenally conservative. One example from Germanic: German /faar-en/ `to go, travel, drive, ride’ is
cognate with English /feer/ which is found only in `cost of a ticket, cost of
travel’ or in archaic greetings such as `Farewell’ or `fare thee
well’. Neither is on the Swadesh list and one is a specialized term
probably assigned to cultural vocabulary by most analysts. Since this sort of
linkage is certainly well known to historical linguists, one has to wonder why
it is not allowed for when thinking about these matters.
In
any case the few who are doing long range comparisons these days will tell you
that they find lots of cognates when they examine the large phyla and try to
relate them to others. In addition to the very active Russian workers, loosely
grouped around Starostin and Gell-Mann at the Santa Fe Institute, all of whom
are partially inhibited by Indo-European constraints, two young (essentially)
Greenbergians are digging up cognates by the bushel in Australasia and India
with connections to Africa. That would be Paul Whitehouse in London and Timothy
Usher in San Francisco. Another group is working on African-Australasian
linkages but prefers to not be noticed, i.e., not named. Another of our gifted
amateurs, Philippe Burgisser of Geneva is working on the ultimate African
problems (Kadu and Shabo) and will be presenting some of his results in the
next regular issue of our journal. Finally, myself has produced and given
papers on Borean, stressing particularly the interesting cognates between the
African anchor in Afrasian (especially Omotic, Ongota, and Cushitic) and
Amerind. Under the inspired direction of Michael Witzel there are plans for
massive computer comparisons involving hundreds of languages around the world.
And so forth. Long ago I should have mentioned Pierre Bancel and Alain de
l’Etang’s superb article on KAKA, the kinship term, which appeared
in MOTHER TONGUE: THE JOURNAL, Issue VII, pp.208-258. It pleases me
immensely that three of our active
scholars are French because of the great tradition and contribution of
francophone scholarship to both anthropology and linguistics. Now, if we can
only get the deutshophone scholars to come join us too!
When
we get the taxonomy finished, and some of us have started a serious attempt to
flesh out proto-human, then maybe we can come to grips with the dating problem.
It certainly won't go away just because we ignore it.
SOURCES
Robert Adler. 2003. “OUT OF AFRICA? Even with new fossil evidence, the theory that
Africa is the birthplace of modern humans still remains controversial”. The Boston Globe, p. C1, C4, June 24, 2003. (An unusually good and careful article on the subject.)
David Caramelli, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Cristiano Vernesi, Martina Lari, Antonella Casoli, Francesco Mallegni, Brunetto Chiarelli, Isabelle Dupanloup, Jaume Bertanpetit, Guido Barbujani, and Giorgo Bertorelle. 2003. “Evidence for a genetic discontinuity between
Neanderthals and 24,000-year-old anatomically modern Europeans.” Edited by Henry C. Harpending, University of Utah. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. May 27, 2003, 6593-6597. Taken from an announcement in SCIENCE and www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1130343100.
Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw, David DeGusta, Henry Gilbert, Gary D. Richards, and F. Clark Howell. 2003, “Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia.” NATURE, vol. 423,
12 June 2003, 742-747.
J. Desmond Clark, Yonas Beyene, Giday WoldeGabriel, William K. Hart, Paul R. Renne, Henry Gilbert, Gen Suwa, Shigehiro Katoh, Kenneth R. Ludwig, Jean-Renaud Boisserie, Berhane Asfaw, and Tim D. White. 2003, “Stratigraphic, chronological, and behavioural
contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia.” NATURE, vol 423, 12 June 2003, 747-752.
Chris Stringer. 2003, “OUT OF ETHIOPIA”. NATURE. Vol. 423, 12 June 2003. 692-694.
OBITUARY
Adolf
Erhart (* May 31, 1926,
Námìš nad Oslavou - † August 11, 2003,
Brno)
Adolf Erhart, in the second half of the 20th
century the most important representant of Indo-European linguistics in
Czechoslovakia and from 1993 in Czech Republic, left us. This sad report was
shocking even for those who was informed about his serious problems with his
health in the recent time. Fortunately, his scientific work remains. Let us
mention the most important points from his scholar’s curriculum.
Adolf
Erhart studied classical and Germanic philology and comparative Indo-European
linguistics by professors V. Machek, F. Novotný, P. Trost, A. Beer and
others at the Faculty of Arts of Brno University in 1945-49. On the basis of
the rigorosum work K problémùm tvoøení
komparativù a superlativù v jazycích indoevropských
a pùvodu primárních komparaèních
suffixù ["Toward the formation of comparatives and superlatives in the
Indo-European languages and origin of the primary comparative suffixes"],
he became the Doctor of Arts. In 1959 he defended the dissertation: Pøíspìvky
k otázce vzniku a vývoje konjugace v indoevropských
jazycích ["Contributions to the question of origin and development of
conjugation in the Indo-European languages"] and was nominated the
Candidate of Sciences. On the basis of his habilitation Nové pohledy
na indoevropský konsonantismus ["New views on the
Indo-European consonantism"] defended in Brno 1962 he became the Docent of
comparative-historical linguistics in 1964. These three studies remain
unpublished, but were projected in his later books. The procedure leading to
his professorship started in 1968, but thanks to the political situation during
so called ‘normalization’ after the Soviet occupation, it was
finished only 20 years later. Fortunately, it had no influence on the quality
of Erhart’s scientific results.
The
following selected bibliography, reduced to monographs with exceptions of some
of important articles which were not developed into the monographs), is
arranged according to main subjects:
General linguistics:
Úvod
do jazykovìdy ["Introduction into linguistics"]. Praha: SPN,
1962; Brno: Masarykova universita, 2001.
Základy
obecné jazykovìdy ["Principles of general linguistics"]. Praha:
SPN, 1965, 1969.
Úvod
do obecné a srovnávací jazykovìdy ["Introduction into
general and comparative linguistics"]. Praha: SPN, 1973.
Základy
jazykovìdy ["Principles of linguistics"]. Praha: SPN, 1980, 1984, 1990.
Jak
klasifikovat jazyky ["How to classify languages?"]? Sborník
prací Filosofické fakulty Brnìnské university A 27, 1979, 21-33.
(together
with J.M. Koøínek) Úvod do fonologie ["Introduction into
phonology"]. Praha: Academia, 2000.
Indo-European phonology, morphology, etymology,
glottogenesis:
(together
with A. Lamprecht) K otázce vztahù indoevropských
jazykù k jiným jazykovým rodinám ["Toward the
question of relations of Indo-European to other language families"]. Slovo
a slovesnost 28, 1967, 385-393.
Studien
zur indoeuropäischen Morphologie. Brno: UJEP, 1970.
(together
with R. Veèerka) Úvod do etymologie ["Introduction into
etymology"]. Brno: UJEP 1975, Praha: SPN, 1981.
Geneze
indoevropských jazykù - diferenciace èi integrace?
["Genesis of Indo-European - differentiation or integration?"] Listy
filologické 99, 1976, 193-205.
Indoevropské
jazyky (Srovnávací fonologie a morfologie) ["Indo-European
languages (Comparative phonology and morphology)"]. Praha: Academia, 1982.
Zur
Entwicklung der Kategorien Tempus und Modus im Indogermanischen. Innsbruck: IBS,
Vorträge und Kleinere Schriften 35, 1985.
Das
indoeuropäische Verbalsystem. Brno: UJEP, 1989.
Das
indogermanische Nominalflexion und ihre Genese. Innsbruck: IBS 73, 1993.
Der
indogermanische Mondname. Linguistica Baltica 7, 1998, 63-69.
Indo-Iranian languages:
Sanskrt
I: Popisná
mluvnice ["Sanskrit I: Descriptive grammar"]. Praha: SPN, 1967.
Sanskrt
II: Historickosrovnávací
mluvnice ["Sanskrit II: Comparative-historical grammar"]. Praha: SPN,
1971.
Struktura
indoíránských jazykù ["Structure of the
Indo-Iranian languages"]. Brno: UJEP, 1980.
Baltic languages:
Litevština ["Lithuanian
language"]. Praha: SPN, 1956.
Litevské povídky ["Lithuanian
tales"], ed. by P. Trost. Praha: Svìt sovìtù, 1956.
Baltské jazyky ["Baltic languages"].
Praha: SPN, 1984.
Slavic languages:
U
kolébky slovanských jazykù ["Toward the cradle of the
Slavic languages"]. Slavia 54, 1985, 337-345.
(co-editor
and co-author) Etymologický slovník jazyka
staroslovìnského ["Etymological dictionary of Old Church
Slavonic"], 5-11. Praha: Academia, 1995-2002.
Odkud
máme jméno? O pùvodu etnonyma Èech ["Where is
our name from? On the origin of the ethonym Èech"]. Slavia 67, 1998, 289-294.
The curriculum vitae of Adolf Erhart and his
exhaustive bibliography from 1949 to 2000 were published by Bohumil
Vykypìl in Erhart’s Festschrift devoted to his 75th birthday (Grammaticus, eds. O.
Šefèík & B. Vykypìl, Brno: Masarykova univerzita
2001, 5-8, 14-23).
It is pity that some of the most fundamental
studies of Adolf Erhart remain untranslated into some of the world’s
languages and so almost unknown. Especially his "Introduction into
etymology" from 1981 (written together with R. Veèerka) and "Indo-European
languages" from 1982 belong to the best what was written about these topics in
the world’s linguistic literature.
Václav Blazek
<with apologies for some missing Czech diacritrics;
will be republished later on, M.W.>