Huh, so Japanese does have ties to Indo-European via Turkic. Japan did borrow China’s symbols, but apparently didn’t use the Chinese meanings.
Tones mean something even in English. They can demarcate the difference between a statement and a question, and between sarcasm/irony and ordinary speech.
He faked it ~ that place is so nasty that people find it nearly impossible to engage in any occupations other than hunting wild animals for fur and meat, herding hardy beasts, and mining underground.
It doesn't take much to send the "native tribes " EAST or SOUTH to find better pasture or warmer weather ~ although they are mighty peculiar since they consider it "cold" when it gets down there in the low MINUS Fifties!
They've been slipping out of there for thousands of years ~ yet, when they escaped India/Nepal in the 200AD period they went right back up to Siberia, so they must have understood their traditional trade routes well (they intersect the Eastern reaches of the "Silk Road"). I'm guessing they maintained those routes even during multi-century long sojourns in China, India and Siberia ~ and only lost that knowledge when they went East to Korea and Japan.
The Hokien language (spoken widely from Thailand, through Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as in Hokien and Taiwan) has "regional dialects" that use ALL 8 old form tones! Of course they also have a vocabulary that is about 30% Dutch in origin. Makes for some interesting listening!