Posted on 05/05/2011 7:38:49 PM PDT by Palter
Researchers studying the various dialects of Japanese have concluded that all are descended from a founding language taken to the Japanese islands about 2,200 years ago. The finding sheds new light on the origin of the Japanese people, suggesting that their language is descended from that of the rice-growing farmers who arrived in Japan from the Korean Peninsula, and not from the hunter-gatherers who first inhabited the islands some 30,000 years ago.
The result provides support for a wider picture, controversial among linguists, that the distribution of many language families today reflects the spread of agriculture in the distant past when farming populations, carrying their languages with them, grew in numbers and expanded at the expense of hunter-gatherers. Under this theory, the Indo-European family of languages, which includes English, was spread by the first farmers who expanded into Europe from the Middle East some 8,000 years ago, largely replacing the existing population of hunter-gatherers.
In the case of Japan, archaeologists have found evidence for two waves of migrants, a hunter-gatherer people who created the Jomon culture and wet rice farmers who left remains known as the Yayoi culture.
The Jomon people arrived in Japan before the end of the last ice age, via land bridges that joined Japan to Asias mainland. They fended off invaders until about 2,400 years ago when the wet rice agriculture developed in southern China was adapted to Koreas colder climate.
Several languages seem to have been spoken on the Korean Peninsula at this time, and that of the Yayoi people is unknown.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I didn’t see the Ainu mentioned in the posted piece.
As far as I know, the Japanese consider the Ainu to be the “other”; in other words, not Japanese.
Most of the stuff I’ve read about the Ainu seems to indicate they were probably descended from the original inhabitant hunter gatherers and were gradually driven into their isolated status.
Ainu about this at one time, blam probably has more.
That's correct. (The oldest Jomon skeleton ever found is 13,000 years old.)"Recent Y-DNA haplotype testing has found that the Jōmon are the genetic ancestors of the Ainu and partly of modern Japanese people.[3] "
The distinctive Jomon cord-pottery style has been found in ancient pottery in Olmec regions of Mexico.
Interesting!
While Europe may have been settled about 8,000 years ago, I is more likely that the waves of Kurgan invaders from the centeral Asian steppes around 6 and 5 thousand years ago brought the Indo-European languages. They also invaded India. In addition they brought the male killer god worship which displaced the female growing nurturing goddess worship. Thus a dominator social model may have displaced a more democratic partnership oriented social model, much to our subsequent distress.
I’ll give you a home-grown example. Here on the East Coast, there are Indian tribes that have been intermarrying with local white folks for hundreds of years. You’ll find Indians who don’t look Indian at all. And if they still happen to speak Lenape or Iroquois then you have a group that’s pretty racially white but linguistically not even close to Indo-European.
But one thing is clear...beyond about 5000 years the trail runs cold as far as interconnecting the language families. Oh sure people have their theories, but it’s nothing that I’ve found particularly convincing.
The Moment Before....
(Abbey Road)
I think the pottery was the subject of a portion of one of the shows on the History Channel recently. An American archeologist and one from Chile Or Columbia had discovered the similarities between the ancient pottery styles found there in S. America and pottery styles (symbols and designs) from Japan.
Their arguement is that the pottery style had to be the result of ocean travel between the two locations using known Pacific currents rather than a walking migration via the Siberian Alaska land bridge theory.
Ancient People Followed 'Kelp Highway' to America, Researcher Says
I liked this book:
The Zuni Enigma
(Still arriving in the thirteen hundreds)
Fascinating link.
there’s way too much “ybp” bs in that article.
When will a scholar defy the pc wisdom and just use “BC” and “AD”?????????????
I’d never have guessed that Rich would be one of the survivors to this point.
Sorry, not drinking that koolaid.
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