Re: Polynesian and South American place names

From: benlizross (benlizro_at_ihug.co.nz)
Date: 08/29/04 

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:13:01 +1200

Philip Deitiker wrote:
>
> 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.

Well, I could look it up, because these words are known to have a common
origin. You are suggesting that Japanese gen, Korean han, and Athapaskan
-t'in do have a common origin? But you do not seem interested in doing
the comparative linguistics that would be required to make such a claim
more than hand-waving.

> 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.

You are aware that English "lake" is borrowed from French, aren't you?
Or are you about to overturn that with a flick of your keyboard?
 
> > 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 have an amazing store of dogmatic linguistic pronouncements which
seem to be based on nothing. Anyway, "ko" is not a proper name, any more
than English "lake" or "river" or "mountain" (all loanwords by the way).

>
> > 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.

But the factors you have just mentioned, if they were in any way
relevant, would tend to produce a written form which did not accurately
reflect the spoken language. So you are suggesting that the fact that a
distorted representation of Athabaskan eminds you of a distorted
representation of Japanese is highly signficant? Are you assuming that
an undistorted representation would show even greater similarity? But we
don't have to assume. We know what actual Japanese is like, and we know
what actual Athabaskan is like, and they do not look particularly
similar.

 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.

A "fact" which you have not established by any sort of test.

>
> > 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?

A lot of linguists know because these languages are well studied.

 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.

Phil, your accounts of the writing system just emphasize how confused is
your understanding. The fact remains that Japanese has borrowed
literally thousands of words from Chinese. Nobody disputes 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.

Obviously it did have an influence, and the correct statement would be
that Ko and Hu are both versions of an earlier form.

>
> >> 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.

Do you really think that Japanese arriving via the coast 1500 years ago
would have either (i) morphed into Athabaskans in that short time? or
(ii) somehow induced the existing population to rename dozens of local
features with silly-sounding Japanese names??

> 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?

No, because a linguist would go beyond "hearing a lot of words very
similar" and show you the thousands of detailed resemblances. The
historical records have nothing to do with it, and language
relationships have been established all over the world in the absence of
significant written records.

If you are interested in showing a linguistic relationship between
Athabaskan and Japanese, this is not the way to go about it.

> 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.

LOL! You dare to call someone else sloppy???

 There are how many languages in
> north america, and according to the linguist these languages
> MRCA back into asia 40 to 60 kya.

What linguist? and what the hell does MRCA mean?

 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).

None of this is impossible, but you are not even remotely close to
evidence of any of it.

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

Again I urge an approach to linguistic data with some seriousness.

> >> 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.

You shot first, buddy.

> 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.

The "test" is pointless, and I repeat again that you have not
administered any "test" on your own data. We have nothing but your
impression to support your claims.
 
> > 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.

Well there's a law against a dilettante accusing others of not being
"serious".

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.

The place name evidence shows neither, so far.
Virtually everybody admits more recent links (past 2000 years or so,
which is as long as Polynesians have existed), but linguistic evidence
of same is not abundant.

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.

It's a "nodal distribution" now? You do these things in your head?

 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 can find a paper by a Japanese scholar claiming a similarity between
Japanese and virtually any other language you care to name.

Ross Clark

 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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