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How is north america and south america's agriculture different? how is it similiar?

Linguistics and human migration to the Americas...?

  • I'm nearly finished reading "The Origin of Language" by Merritt Ruhlen and there is one aspect I don't understand. In terms of the Renfrew and Greenberg models for language classification and the Indo-European expansion, I can understand how the evidence supports Indo-European languages largely supplanting Dene-Caucasian languages throughout Eurasia because the Indo-Europeans had agriculture. However, what I don't understand is how they suggest that the first set of migrations to the Americas were of the Eurasiatic (Amerind family,) related to Indo-European) language families. While the Na-Dene language (part of the Dene-Caucasian family) migrated to the Americas only later. This confuses me for two reasons.. 1. If the spread of the Eurasiatic family was due to agriculture, why wasn't agriculture as widespread in the Americas as it was in Eurasia? 2. How did the Dene-Caucasian migration happen later if they were being overrun by the Eurasiatic peoples, only to supplant the Eurasiatic peoples in the Americas? Wouldn't it make more sense if the Dene-Caucasian (Na-Dene) migration happened first (or concurrently,) especially considering the isolated pockets in what is now the south-east US? Given all the land available, the Eurasiatic (Amerind) peoples may have been just as inclined to fill the empty space rather than compete with the Na-Dene? However, were the Eurasiatic peoples not agriculturalists? Did they simply give up agriculture because of the plentiful game in the Americas? Am I missing something here? I realize these models are not universally accepted, but what is their justification for how this happened?

  • Answer:

    Merritt Ruhlen is a linguist known for his interdisciplinary approach to anthropology. In this respect, he has been on the cutting edge of research and education, but much of his conclusions are controversial. The concept of multiple waves of humans arriving in the New World is commonly accepted, but Joseph Greenberg's technique of language classification is not. Ruhlen supports Greenberg's conclusions, which might be faulty according to many other linguists who believe that the system attempts to use similarities of sound and meaning to classify and many of the languages studied have no absolute proof of the sounds. A language or language group is not the same as a culture. It is only a part of the overall collection. Another problem is due to the bias of some academians who are attempting to prove that all human languages are interrelated. Some language groups are being lumped together before there is adequate data to support these connections.

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As noted in response to your other question, I have this on my agenda. Had I seen only the two questions and had to unseen choose twixt the two, this one would have won hands down. Thank you for asking it. I am looking for the book and will read it. I am very good at finding statements that are not logical, and you appear to be much the same way. Perhaps together we can make an educated and knowledgeable correction to his book.

B Knott Wildered

My ancestors,Abanaki, part of the north eastern nations of Algonquin speak the da nene language and have stories of coming from the dry lands east of the salt waters, towards the rising sun. They were primarly hunter, gathers, with some growing of corn beans and squash, there growing seasons could be very short There is a word for the mammoth in our language. I believe that some of our ancestors were the Sammi people of Finnland, as there is a group from our area with the A+ blood group which is strong in the Sammi. My brother worked with a man who spent time in the northern Islands of Japan after the 2nd world war. He was raised on the Macaw indian reservation of Neah Bay in Wash, state and spoke their dialect, when in the Islands he could understand and speak to them I think they are called the Aniu and are more caucasion then the Japanese. I read an article in a 1800's news paper that told how the Hudson Bay Co. had ransomed two sailors from the Macaw indians of Neah Bay when they washed a shore in a wrecked boat. The Japanese currents swing in close to the Wash. shore line. I have fished these waters for salmon and saw huge ocean sun fish with in two miles of shore that came in on the current. So there have been many waves of people coming to america, right up to the present.

TheAsender

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Heart of man

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