HOW IT ALL STARTED 9000 YEARS AGO

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The cross-disciplinary studies on the Beginning of the languages and cultures in Northeast Asia

 

     Recently two pivotal articles were published as for the origins of the two language families used in the East Asia. In May 2019 the result of inter-disciplinary study on the origin and dispersal process of Sino-Tibetan language was published in the PNAS journal while the same subject on the Transeurasian language family was dealt in a more comprehensive study comprising linguistics, archaeology and genetics with the result released in Nature in November 2021.

First, the origin and disersal of Sino-Tibetan languages

    The study on the Sino-Tibetan languages for the PNAS journal article was led by Max Planck Institute for Science of Human History in collaboration with two French Research Institutes: Centre des Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale and the Centre de Recherches en Mathématiques de la Décision. They developed a database of comparative linguistic data, and applied the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. Then they used phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland.

     The Sino-Tibetan language family is spoken by 1.4 billion people in China, Tibet, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal and parts in Pakistan and India, second only to 3.2 billion speakers of Indo-European, but the tracing of its linguistic origin and courses of dispersal has been known a very tough academic task because it comprises all the different types of morphological systems. Grammatically some of the Sino-Tibetan languages have more affinity to the Transeurasian languages than to Chinese. The Chinese is the typical isolating language with the SVO structure, while the Tibetan and Burmese are synthetic with highly inflectional changes sensitive to timing, plurality and respect with the SOV structure, which are the typical features of the Transeurasian languages. The immigrants from Myanmar and Tibet to Korea and Japan find their new language quite familiar and easy to learn, not just for the SOV structure but for the similar application of inflections, including the respectful expressions.

 However, the focus of the Max Planck study on the cognates related to agriculture and domestic animals was useful in tracing the origin of the Sino-Tibetan languages to the Northern Chinese communities of foxtail millet farmers of the Neolithic cultures of late Cishan and early Yangshao culture of around 7,200 years ago. The place is where the loess sits on the middle steam of Yellow River. Though the area is known dry and arid due to the low precipitation in our time, at the age around 7,200 BP the area must have been very productive being at the height of the Holocene climate optimum.

 

ORIGIN AND DISPERSAL OF THE TWO LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN THE EAST ASIA


 

Now, the origin and dispersal of the Transeurasian language family

“The linguistic relatedness of the Transeurasian languages—also known as ‘Altaic’—is among the most disputed issues in linguistic prehistory. Transeurasian denotes a large group of geographically adjacent languages stretching across Europe and northern Asia, and includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The question of whether these five groups descend from a single common ancestor has been the topic of a long-standing debate between supporters of inheritance and borrowing. Recent assessments show that even if many common properties between these languages are indeed due to borrowing, there is nonetheless a core of reliable evidence for the classification of Transeurasian as a valid genealogical group.”     -excerpt from the Nature Article

 The extensive study carried out in collaboration of 41 renowned researchers and professors under the triangulation model comprising linguistics, archaeology and genetics produced a totally new story on the origin and dispersal process of the Transeurasian language. Different from the Sino-Tibetan language group, all the Transeurasian languages have the grammatical affinity with the common SOV structure, highly developed inflection systems and carries, in a various degree of complexity, the respect-sensitive expressions in verbs.

Followings are the important takeaways from the Nature article released November 10,2021 concerning the origins of Korean and Japanese people and language:

 -The extensive cross-disciplinary study based on the scientific analysis and evidence denies the traditional ‘pastoralist hypothesis’ regarding the Transeurasian language dispersal and supports the agricultural spread of the languages.

 -The originator of the proto-Transeurasian language was the neolithic farmers who cultivated broomcorn millet in West Liao basin around 9,000 BP and from this area the languages dispersed to the west through Central Asia up to Anatolia, eastward to Manchuria and to Korean peninsula and to Japan to the east.

 -The archaeological evidence reveals the Neolithic cultures in the West Liao

Basin separated into two branches: Korean Chulmun (Comb-pattern) earthenware

Branch and the other covering the Amur, Primorye and Liaodong, confirming previous

findings about the dispersal of millet agriculture to Korea by 5500 BP and to the east

Manchuria and beyond by 5000BP.

 

-The archeological analysis further clusters the Bronze Age sites in the West Liao area with

Mumun ( no-pattern earthenware ) sites in Korea and Yayoi sites in Japan, meaning the

transition from the neolithic to the Bronze Age took place in the same region where the

proto-Transeurasian language first originated, separate from the Yellow River region of

the Sino-Tibetan speakers, and by the Bronze Age  formed a wide cultural and, possibly,

political sphere, comprising West Liao, Shandong peninsula, Korean Peninsula

and Southern Japan. ( See the Fig.2 of the original article in the Nature )


to continue...

 

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