Re: Polynesian and South American place names

From: Philip Deitiker (Donevenask_at_worlnet.att.net)
Date: 08/29/04 

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:48:27 GMT

benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> says in
news:4131A100.4234@ihug.co.nz:

> And on all these ending in -n you plan to base what claim?

No. If Korea can have on suffix, chinese another and Japanese
still a third. We say lake, spanish lago, Scottish Lach, how old
are these minor differences.
  Jacques is saying, despite these relatively small changes in
our language over time hu = ko = chosuji are all recently
derived from each other. I say BS. If Japanese say ko then it
probably fits better with an older suffix they used for lake.
If Japanese did not have their own words why can't they speak
chinese now like chinese. There is a very specific reason, there
are several Japanese and at least one chinese words in the
Japanese language for many common things.

> Like to see the examples of "river".

IIRC Kutchukaroko

> As "lake", as
> explained twice now, it's a loanword from Chinese.

I don't think so, proper names tend to be the oldest in Japan,

> You were trying to make some kind of case based on
> agreement with Japanese, without even looking at local
> origins.

Back up a little bit, Jacques [confusion intended], before you
go jumping up and down what I was saying is simply this, despite
the way Japanese have created their 'alphabet', despite that it
has been tranlated in the spanish pronunciation, despite that
the NA never had an 'alphabet' and despite the way the canadian
have translated their alphabet there is alot of similarity. Who
expects the meanings to be exact. But the fact that so many
place names in _ONE_ area of north america, and not any other
area, could exactly be Japanese place names, I find interesting.
 
> why do the words need to have
>> evolved from modern japanese,
 
> I assumed that even you wouldn't be suggesting that. That's
> why I have pointed out that several of the words you were
> working with were not in Japanese 2-3 ky ago.

How do you know? Chinese did not create the Japanese language,
they had a large impact on how the ruling families were
educated. The chinese per say were only in Asuka for about 200
years as educators before most were kicked out. Japanese
continued to educated people within their system using what they
learned of chinese. If chinese 'han' is such a perfect system
for expressing japanese in written form, why were the 2 new
'alphabets' so appreciated by japanese. Clearly neither you or
Jacques can appreciate this.

> I have no idea what you might mean by "concretized". I'm
> quite aware of what I think you are trying to express here
> about Chinese-Japanese linguistic relations. However, it
> has no relevance to the present discussion. Whatever "works
> very well" means, it is not evidence for any actual
> linguistic relationship.

Japanese appear to have several words for everything, just
because you know one does not mean you know all or even local
words. THe point is the chinese might have brought Hu, but this
may have been similar to a suffix or word that was already in
use and so it was conviniently merged into Ko. None the less it
is still closer to athabascans. If you allow the liberty that
pre-sinitic Japanese tongue had some influence on how japanese
spoke chinese words or who chinese words eventually evolved into
the japanese then you should reject the notion that Ko is
strictly a version of Hu.
 
>> Except you can't trace a single gene of north american
>> ancestry to any chinese group older than 10 kya.
>
> Better let Cavalli-Sforza know at once.

You don't yet know my opinion of C-S, do you?
Would you like to hear my opinion of The Journey of Man.

> A ha, another scientist with a closet deity.

Because HLA haplotypes tend to come from SPECIFIC places and
there are markers of specific peoples. The motion of the
Tlinglet appears to be much more recent than that of the other
NA groups. However, because typing in eastern siberia has not
been so great until recently, still not what I would call great
it is difficult to pinpoint the actual location.

  There are some different theories.
1. The [ancestors of] Ainu have primarily lived in northern
Japan since the incipient Jomon
2. Little immigration between northern Japan and amur river
region.

-or-
 
1. Ainu are an admixture of more recent immigrants and older
persistent communities
2. Lots of back and forth immigration

this could lead to 2 conclusions. I look at the northern Jomon
as being a tip of a larger AmurNorthern Jomon culture.

> Look, Phil, I have to be frank -- this kind of superficial
> phonetic comparison is completely worthless as evidence of
> anything.

What you are saying is that there are similarities but you don't
beleive they amount to anything, convergent evolution in the way
that tongues flip. This could be true; however, what I said, I
was urging caution on your part for summarily disregarding an
association, the caution goes like this, the relationship could
be younger than 4000 years, potentially 1500 or even 1000 years,
and it could potentially be direct, meaning people came directly
from Japan to Alaska and then migrated down the coast. I won't
urge caution on Jacques part because I understand now he is just
a foul mouthed idiot and also because his pathetic postings are
also always out of synch with my posting I have no problem with
killfiling him [saves me a little wear and tear on my CT
problem].
   Caution means caution, in this case do not be so 'knee-jerk'
to rule out all possible instances of more direct contact, to
explain certain cultural similarities.

Let me break this down into a philosophical stance so that it is
easy to understand.

1. Diffusion with gene flow.
2. Diffusion against gene flow.

My stance is if you can provide reasonably good evidence for
recent gene flow, the longer range cultural exchange becomes far
more believable. However in aboriginal peoples the cultural flow
and gene flow should roughly coincide. If they do then one
should be more open to investigating the long range cultural
link as this might be more productive than investingating random
similarities over a global context.
  Previously I have demonstrated that.
1. Gene flow to south america from southern Japan was early.
  a. Jomonese pottery (early) is similar to some ecuadorian
     pottery (early)
  b. however the pottery lags the gene flow by several thousand
     years and is out of synch with contemporary pottery.
  c. In addition the peoples of the ecuadorian region are least
     related to the southern Japanese of the period.
  d. conclusion rule out the direct cultural link.
2. The agriculatural link was tested
  a. Japanese appear to have been using and semidomesticating
     beans close to the beginning of the Jomon period.
  b. South americans domesticated sqaush, later two forms of
     beans.
  c. The pattern of seed use in Japan and regional domestication
     fits the new world pattern; however bean domestication
     lagged in the new world by several thousand years.
  d. Conclusion, while the philosophies of resource optimization
     may have been carried it is dubious that there is a direct
     agrarian link.
3. The link between the Ainu and Pottery in the New World.
  [Note that when I say Ainu I am also referring to proximal
   peoples of the Amur river and surrounding region]
  a. The advent of pottery in equador follows closely behind
     what appears to have been gene flow from northern regions
     of Japan or the Amur region
  b. Amur river and Northern Jomon cultures had pottery early
     later or about the same time as southern Japan.
  c. However the pottery style of Amur and Northern Jomon
     markedly differs from early ecuadorian.
  d. There are more similar potteries in NW-US however there
     appears to be a division between these pottery styles and
     south american pottery. In addition these potteries appear
     much later.
  e. conclusion is that there appears to be no direct link
     between amur river and ecuadorian pottery evolution,
     however I would not argue to rule out a link, because the
     problem is that if Amur could evolve from Fukui, then
     Ecuadoran Pottery could evolve [retrograde] from Amur. The
     critical element could be the best pottery resources
     available in a region.[IOW caution]
 
So basically this is how I see the philosophy of cultural
similarity and gene flow can be tested. By and large these test
fail even though there are interesting similarities up and until
we start talking about recent potential waves. Then it is not so
easy to fail test.
  One could develope a philosophy that the PacNW acts as a kind
of cultural strainer by which culture that comes from the old
world is sifted through the selective challenges of the new
world, any that do not fit well are lost, even if they are
beneficial to the south.
  Thus I think it is careless to hand brush away all linguistic
similarities because the words don't fit exactly. When I listen
to Norwegian I hear alot of words very similar to English,
spelling is very different, but the meaning is often very close
to english. Of course we had the romans keeping tract of all
these Norman invasions. There is no-one keeping tract of asian
invasions into the new world. Would you contest a
norwegian/english link if there was no history prior to 1200 AD?
Simply because there is no history there is no link, right, no
Proof.

  So let us go back to our specific problem, where I do battle
with these sloppy linguist. There are how many languages in
north america, and according to the linguist these languages
MRCA back into asia 40 to 60 kya. Ah-huh. OK. but settlement of
the New world is maybe 16 kya. Some of this linguistic diversity
has to be explained by admixture from languages of diverse
origins.
  So what do you do if you have a people who are say living in
the New world for 10,000 years with an admixed language between
W.Pac.Rim dwellers 4000 years previous and Amur river language,
that then gets input from an asian language from, what shape
does the language take.
 How about
1. Borrowed words with slightly different meanings.
2. Changes in the way syallables are used to create new words.
3. Alteration of old place names to fit new pronunciations
schemes (probably as the result of new rulers in an admixed
older group).

Again I urge caution on the issue of treatment of recent
immigration waves from the old world.

>> The Tlinglet HLA sit nicely into Japanese but better into
>> Amur river and there are no good intermediate groups in
>> between.
>
> When
>> you get serious
>
> I am as serious as you could wish.

No you appear to be in a mode to shoot first and ask question
later. I never said that there was perfect agreement, what I
said is just a whole bunch on place names in one place could
exactly be place names in another specific spot in asia. This
appears to be something you wish not to further deny, however I
wish you would at least try to take the test I gave you such, if
you consider yourself well familiar with Japanese, that others
would benefit from your conclusion.

> You on the other hand appear to be a dilettante.

Yes and so is there a law against doing that in a
sci.archaeology group. Is it a sin against all humanity to throw
out a few ideas here, a few similarity that one sees. The point
is that this is not a journal like 'Nature' [And I would frankly
never publish ANYTHING in nature] one should be capable of
entertaining a few wild ideas here without getting kicked in the
groin by naer-do-well-foul-mouths. I know people that come with
wild ideas all the time, in a seminar the other day one guy came
and was presenting some wild ideas and he basically said hey, my
hypothesis is like 1 in 20 correct, but that is how he operated
fish through 20 and get one correct. Not every idea that a
scientist entertaines he publishes, as that sig line goes, 'if
we knew everything it wouldn't be called research'.
  At the level of 1 in 20, it is very plausible that the
Tlinglet at least are direct migrations from northern Japan
within the last 2000 years. The question is what is the
relationship with Tlinglet and Athabascans and are the
Athabascans an earlier wave from similar region. From HLA point
of view they are a more difficult case than the Tlinglet and if
some day I get great data on the siberians I will create another
display of the haplotypes like I have done for other specific
groups. Then I might feel inclined to flesh out the Athabascans.
  Lets get back on track, someone in this group threw out the
idea of a link between polynesians and south americans, others
here completely discredited that idea. What I came back and said
is that there may not be such long range links, but that we
should be cautious not to stomp on all such links there could be
shorter range links. Looking specifically at the Japanese,
because they have been more isolated from western and chinese
influence and because many of the Amur region languages have
died out. I am very well aware of the cultural and genetic
connections of Northern Japan and the surrounding regions, so
that when I hold up Japan it becomes a surrogate for other
cultures in the region that are not so well documented. Again I
urge caution on the oversimplified treatment of what the
diffusionist/hyperdiffusionist boundary.
 Reconsider one more time, diffusion with gene flow has a much
longer potential range than diffusion against gene flow. This
may be something that cultural anthropologist hate to here, but
it is an expectation that people carry with them culture.

> Better examples of what? You consider this stuff "examples"
> of something?

There is a nodal distribution of name similarities. Whenever you
see a nodal distribution of any type of similarity it gives
pause to wonder if there was a migration at one time. While this
does not perfectly overlay with another nodal distribution that
is similar, it is close. But the cultural diffusion does not
have to exactly overlay with genetics, does it? Do these names
have to be exactly derived from Japanese to have reasonably
recent connection, no. There is a nodal distribution of nascent
culture in Ecuador, but it did not fit logically a pattern of
direct contribution.
 
>> I would not be at all surprised if these were athabascans
>
> I just told you they were. Apparently you didn't bother to
> check this out before launching your Japanese theory.

Not really. I know where the Tlinglet are settled, I did see on
the map referal to places named after the Athabascans in the
general proximity so I assumed they would be proximal. To be
quite honest, by the time you get to the Athabascans you get
already into the transamerican genetic gradient which is one of
those areas of the world whereby the genetic frequencies are on
a near horizontal slope over great distances. I single out the
Tlinglet because they are an exception, this instance is that
you can place genetic distributions to particular places,
whereas the Athabascans grade into other amerind groups. So that
_you_ go by language as a cut-off, and I go by genes and there
is none. You forget my interest is in genes and selection. If it
is not a node, I have only passing interest in it.
 
>> because the two recent groups that show great HLA
>> similarity with the Japanese, Korean, Orochon, Amur river
>> and Proximal regions are the Tlinglet and Athabascans (to
>> a lessor degree).
>
> Cool! So you can do Dene-Japano-Caucasian!

No, Precolumbian Caucasian link in asia is probably no younger
than 10 kya and pricipally it is probably around 18 kya, whereas
the link I am refering to is on the order of no more than 4 kya.
Its a much closer link. I also would not call it Dene-Japano. I
would call it Dene-AmurJomon. I have to find that paper by the
Japanese who claimed there is similarity between the Basque and
the Japanese language. You could argue [Dene-AmurJomon]-
SinoCaucasian and then I might agree.
  Besides I don't buy the link between Chinese and Caucasian
languages, to be quite honest, I see a strong expansion from the
south of china into the north with the compression of older
chinese cultures into the north and east of china. I think the
connection between chinese and caucasian is sloppy, whereas
somewhat more intriqued by the connection between the basque and
and japanese-siberian languages.
  

-- 
Philip
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