E-Letter responses to:

review: Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions Science 2003; 300: 597-603 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Published E-Letter responses:

Distorting the Histories of the First Farmers

Victor Golla, Ripan S. Malhi and Robert L. Bettinger   (28 May 2003)

Lost farmers and languages in Asia: some comments to Diamond and Bellwood

Dorian Q Fuller   (28 May 2003)

Different mechanisms of Holocene expansion

Atholl J. Anderson   (9 May 2003)

Distorting the Histories of the First Farmers 28 May 2003
Victor Golla, Professor California Statue University, Humboldt, Ripan S. Malhi and Robert L. Bettinger Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Distorting the Histories of the First Farmers	The historical record is indeed frequently "much richer and more complex" than is accommodated by Diamond and Bellwood's proposal that the spread of agriculture was the primary agent for the dispersal of human genes and languages ("Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions," April 25, p. 597). Indeed, one of their "clearest examples" from the Eastern Hemisphere, the spread of Austronesian languages, muddles the record by spuriously linking disparate cultural-historical events. The expansion of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian was not one single, sweeping migration of farmers. It comprised several slow diffusions of peoples and cultures, and sometimes only cultures, as in Melanesia (1). The explosion of the Polynesian languages into the Pacific was undoubtedly a classic instance of migration. However, it was driven by the development of sophisticated seafaring technology (2), not farming success, the coincidental transmission of agriculture to Hawaii and New Zealand being secondary. In the Western Hemisphere, Diamond and Bellwood regard the northward expansion of Mesoamerican Uto-Aztecan speakers as one of the more "unequivocal" examples of the language-farming- spread nexus, citing limited linguistic evidence that Hill (3) adduces to support their thesis. Hill’s case is quite tenuous, however, resting principally on the assumption that Hopi farming vocabulary derives from an ancestral pan-Northern Uto-Aztecan farming vocabulary, for which Hopi provides virtually the only instantiation. The mtDNA evidence does not suggest a northward expansion of Uto-Aztecan farmers out of Mesoamerica into the Southwest United States; genetic patterns are strongly correlated with geography and crosscut linguistic boundaries (4). Contrary to Hill and Diamond and Bellwood, the archaeological record establishes that western Great Basin and Southern California hunter-gatherers did not “de-evolve” from farmers. Farming was never present. The dispersal of Northern Uto-Aztecan was mainly in California and the Great Basin and entirely the product of hunter-gatherers. Closely inspected, Diamond and Bellwood’s basic hypothesis more frequently distorts than illuminates the histories of the speakers of the world’s languages. 1. C. Capelli et al., Am J. Hum Gen. 68, 432 (2001). 2. P. V. Kirch, On the Road of the Winds (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2000). 3. J. Hill, Am. Anthropol. 103, 913 (2001). 4. R.S. Malhi et al., Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 120, 108 (2003).
Lost farmers and languages in Asia: some comments to Diamond and Bellwood 28 May 2003
Dorian Q Fuller, Lecturer in Archaeobotany University College London Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Lost farmers and languages in Asia: some comments to Diamond and Bellwood	The evidence from South and East Asia does not present as simple a picture as is painted in this paper. South/east Asian examples are supposed to be driven by rice agriculture, but current evidence indicates a more complex history for rice. Over the past ten years there has been an accumulation of numerous independent genetic studies on rice, including chromosome disjunction (1, 2), isozymes (3), cpDNA (4, 5), and mapping of Short interspersed elements (SINEs) (6), all of which indicate two distinct domestications for Asian rice: a domestication from perennial wild rice of short-grained japonica, and annual wild rices, possessing a characteristic cpDNA deletion as ancestors of a separate indica domestication. This has implications contrary to the suggestion that rice agriculture spread into India from the northeast with Austroasiatic speakers. While japonica rices undoubtedly do spread out of China, this cannot explain the origins of indica rices, which if an Indian origin is assumed, also spread into Southeast Asia and China. Numerous words for rice in Dravidian and Sanskritic languages are not derived from Austroasiatic, but attest to separate origins (7, 8). An important aspect of the linguistic data of north India is evidence for an extinct language that provided terms for many crops, including those of Near Eastern and India origin, to Dravidian and Sanskritic languages (9). Thus, the linguistic picture, as well as current archaeology, suggests that monsoon agriculture was already established in parts of India before the crops were taken up from the west and that this was a process of selective adoption rather than immigrant colonization (7, 10) Details of the phylogeny of rice strains of Cheng et al. (8) suggests other phylogeographic patterns. Among domesticated japonica landraces, it is those in tropical Southeast Asia that are closest to the wild populations of South China, while the modern Chinese rice strains are more derived. This suggests that the early cultivated varieties of East Asian rice were more tropically adapted, during the warmer and wetter Early Holocene, and may have been pushed southwards as climate dried. More temperate tolerant rices on the other hand may have evolved from these tropical forms later, and thus the spread of rice across China, especially central and northern China, would have been delayed. In cooler northern China, it was early cultivation systems based on short growing season, summer millets that were the basis of the earliest villages, and these seem to be obscured by a rice-centered language dispersal model. Could climatic constraints on local cultivation systems therefore have played as important a role in structuring aspects of agricultural dispersal? What the current state of evidence most clearly demonstrates is the need for more problem-oriented scientific research, including archaeobotanical, genetic, and comparative linguistic, with an interest in the many stories of various domesticates. References 1. J. Wan, H. Ikehashi, Euphytica 94, 151 (1997). 2. Y.-I. Sato, R. Ishikawa, H. Morishma, Heredity 65, 75 (1990). 3. R. Sano, H. Morishma, Theor. Appl. Genet.84, 266 (1992). 4. W.-B. Chen et al., Japanese J Genet. 68, 597 (1993). 5. W.-B. Chen et al., Euphytica 75, 195 (1994). 6. C. Cheng et al., Mol. Biol. Evol. 20, 67 (2003). 7. D. Fuller, in Examining the Language/Farming Disersal Hypothesis, P. Bellwood, C. Renfrew, Eds. (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, 2003), chap. 16. 8. F. Southworth, in Languages and Cultures: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polome, M. Ali Jazayery, W. Winter, Eds. (Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1988), pp. 649-668. 9. C. Masica, in Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, M. Deshpande, P. Hook, Eds. (Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1979), pp. 55-151. 10. D. Fuller, in Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, volume III, S. Settar, R. Korisettar, Eds. (Manohar, New Delhi), pp. 247-363.
Different mechanisms of Holocene expansion 9 May 2003
Atholl J. Anderson, Archaeologist Centre for Archaeological Reserarch, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Different mechanisms of Holocene expansion	The Diamond and Bellwood hypothesis of competitive farming in Holocene expansion ("Farmers and Their Languages: the First Expansions" Review, Science, 25 April, p. 597) may not apply to the offshore islands which they include. Remote Oceania was uninhabited before Austronesian colonization so no external competitive advantage existed, and the rapid rate of Lapita expansion precluded any internal advantage from farming, had it existed during the dispersal phase. Remote Oceanic archaeological data indicate currently that only the fowl had a possible early Lapita distribution (1-3). No remains of domestic root crops are recorded from early Lapita sediments and weak lexemic change to Oceanic cultigen names (4) reduces specification of transport timing during the Lapita sequence. Recent evaluation of early eastern Lapita data indicates that agriculture was insignificant or absent (1-3, 5). Archaeofaunal data emphasize large, indigenous taxa. An autocatalytic rush on these may have fuelled the dispersal process in Remote Oceania and elsewhere on offshore islands (6-8). The critical mechanism was probably maritime technology rather than farming. Austronesian expansion began soon after the advent of the sail in East Asia (9, 10). In the Caribbean, there were two expansions before the arrival of agriculture (8). Some Mediterranean islands were colonized before, and some after, the availability of farming (11, 12) and the remote Atlantic islands long after mainland farming was established but at times of marked change in maritime technology. The Holocene expansion hypothesis would be improved by linkage to the whole Neolithic package. Regional circumstances may have favoured different elements such as social cohesion, military organisation or transport technology rather than farming and its demographic consequences. References 1. D.W . Steadman et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 99, 3673 (2002). 2. S. Best, Lapita: A View from the East (New Zealand Archaeological Association, Auckland, 2002). 3. G. Clark, A. J. Anderson, Archaeology in Oceania 36, 77 (2001). 4. P. V. Kirch, R. C. Green, Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001). 5. D.V. Burley et al., Archaeology in Oceania 36, 89 (2001). 6. A. J. Anderson, in Prehistoric Dispersal of Mongoloids, T. Akazawa, E. Szathmary, Eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1966), pp. 359-374. 7. W. F. Keegan, J. M. Diamond, in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, M. B. Schiffer, Ed. (Academic Press, San Diego, 1987), pp. 49-92. 8. W. F. Keegan, World Archaeology 26, 400 (1995). 9. A. J. Anderson, in East of Wallace's Line, S. O'Connor, P. Veth, Eds. (Balkema, Rotterdam, 2000), pp. 13-50. 10. S. McGrail, Boats of the World (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2001). 11. J. F. Cherry, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3, 145 (1990). 12. D. Ramis et al., Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 15, 3 (2002).