Language as a Clue to Prehistory

[lpetrich]

 Proto-Niger–Congo language - there is a big gap in listed protolanguages between that and Proto-Bantoid (no separate Wiki article) and  Proto-Bantu language

Niger-Congo -- Atlantic-Congo -- Volta-Congo -- Benue-Congo -- Bantoid -- Southern Bantoid -- Bantu

Some linguists reconstruct noun classes for Proto-Niger-Congo, though the family has a lot of variety in them.

A survey of Niger-Congo noun class agreement systems -- Hepburn-Gray.pdf
Gives these examples:

Otoro ethnonyms:
gwu-toro "Toro person", li-toro "Toro people", o-toro "Toro land", dhi-toro "Toro language"

Baïnounk Gubëeher botanical names:
so-dooma "kaba tree", bu-domma "kaba-tree fruit", ja-dooma "kaba-tree leaves", tin-dooma "kaba-tree sap"

Otoro is one of the  Talodi–Heiban languages, a branch of Kordofanian, and I've found (PDF) Do Heiban and Talodi form a genetic group and how are they related to Niger-Congo? | Roger Blench - Academia.edu
Talodi-Heiban is likely in Atlantic-Congo.

Niger-Congo languages - Widespread characteristics of Niger-Congo languages | Britannica

The number of noun classes varies from language to language. Within the Atlantic branch, for instance, the number of noun classes varies from 3 to nearly 40. In the Gur branch 11 classes are most commonly found. In Bantu languages 12 to 15 noun classes frequently occur, and early Bantu, as reconstructed by scholars, is thought to have had some 23 noun classes.

Atlantic = Atlantic languages | African language | Britannica =  West Atlantic languages (Atlantic-Congo)

Gur is  Gur languages (Volta-Congo)

 Proto-Niger–Congo language itself mentions Kordofanian (Talodi-Heiban?), (West) Atlantic , Oti-Volta (Gur), Kwa (in Volta-Congo), Benue-Congo, and Bantu.

So all these examples are Atlantic-Congo, and some are restricted further, in Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, and Bantu.

 

[lpetrich]

Niger-Congo Noun Classes: Reconstruction, Historical Implications, and Morphosyntactic Theory - ProQuest

Asking "Is the NC-type system unique?" and addressing issues like "Probability of chance resemblance" and "Can a noun class system be borrowed?"

Discussing:

• Benue-Congo incl. Bantu (in Volta-Congo)
• Kwa: Guang, Ghana-Togo-Mountain (in Volta-Congo)
• Atlantic: Fula-Sereer, Bainounk-Kobiana-Kasanga, Tenda, Cangin, Bak, Mel (in Atlantic-Congo)
• Kordofanian: Heiban, Talodi, Rashad, Katloid (in Atlantic-Congo?)
• Kru (in Niger-Congo)
• Gur-Adamawa: Gur, Senufo, Adamawa, Ubangi (in Volta-Congo)

Noun classes:

• 1 *gwu-,*a-|*gwu-
• 1a *gwu-,*a-|*∅-
• 2 *ba-|*ba-
• 2a *ba-|*-VN
• 3 *gu-|*gu-
• 4 *gi-|*gi-
• 5 *di-|*di-
• 6 *Nwa-|Nwa-
• 22 *mi-|*mi-
• 23 *ma-|*ma-

Why the jump in numbering? Then discusses "Noun Class Evidence for Volta-Congo" and "Is there evidence for an Atlantic-Congo branch?"

Seems like much of the evidence is rather restricted in distribution.

 

[lpetrich]

Looking at putative Niger-Congo languages outside of Atlantic-Congo,  Dogon languages,  Mande languages, and  Ijoid languages they lack a noun-class system and their preferred word order is subject-object-verb, not what is usual: subject-verb-object.


In addition to noun classes, one can reconstruct verbal extensions, at least for Atlantic-Congo. These are suffixed to the verb root, and they have such meanings as passive voice, causative, and reciprocal ("each other").


As an aside, in addition to Appendix:Swahili noun classes - Wiktionary Wiktionary has Appendix:Swahili verbs - Wiktionary and Appendix:Swahili verbal derivation - Wiktionary


Reconstruction of Proto-Niger-Congo pronouns:

• 1s: *mV(front)
• 2s: *mV(back)
• 1p: *TV(close)
• 2p: *NV(close)

 

[lpetrich]

Turning to Proto-Niger-Congo numerals, I have found two different reconstructions, by Pozdniakov and by Güldemann (2-5 only):

• 1: *ku--di (> ni/-in), *do, *gbo/*kpo
• 2: *ba-di -- *Ri
• 3: *tat / *tath -- *ta(C)
• 4: *na(h)i -- *na(C)
• 5: *tan, *nu -- *nU
• 6: 5+1
• 7: 5+2
• 8: *na(i)nai (< 4 reduplicated)
• 9: 5+4
• 10: *pu / *fu
• 20: < ‘person’

The best matches are for 3 and 4, with 2 and 5 having rather limited matches. I checked on Appendixroto-Niger-Congo numerals - Wiktionary

Here are some more general lists:

• At Mark Rosenfelder's "Zompist" site: The Numbers List Unsourced, but contains now-dead languages and reconstructions.
• Numeral Systems of the World Sourced, but present-day-only.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll give some examples of Swahili, likely the best-known of the Bantu languages. I used Google Translate, so it may be a bit too schematic.

I have a good book.
I have one good book.
I have good books.
I have two good books.
I have three good books.

Nina kitabu kizuri.
Nina kitabu kimoja kizuri.
Nina vitabu vizuri.
Nina vitabu viwili vizuri.
Nina vitabu vitatu vizuri.

BTW, the Swahili word for book is borrowed from Arabic kitab. Its first syllable was then reinterpreted as a Swahili noun-class prefix.

I went through a lot of other words:

Dream
Nina ndoto nzuri.
Nina ndoto nzuri.
Thought
Nina mawazo mazuri.
Nina mawazo mazuri.
Eye
Nina jicho zuri
Nina macho mazuri
Hand
Nina mkono mzuri.
Nina mikono nzuri.
Bed
Nina kitanda kizuri.
Nina vitanda vizuri.
Key
Nina ufunguo mzuri.
Nina funguo nzuri.
Car
Nina gari nzuri.
Nina magari mazuri.
Rock
Nina mwamba mzuri.
Nina miamba mzuri.
Star
Nina nyota nzuri.
Nina nyota nzuri.
Lake
Nina ziwa zuri.
Nina maziwa mazuri.
Tree
Nina mti mzuri.
Nina miti mizuri
Flower.
Nina maua mazuri.
Nina maua mazuri.
Butterfly
Nina kipepeo mzuri.
Nina vipepeo wazuri.
Dog
Nina mbwa mzuri.
Nina mbwa wazuri.
Cat
Nina paka mzuri.
Nina paka nzuri.
Lion
Nina simba mzuri.
Nina simba wazuri.
Elephant
Nina tembo mzuri.
Nina tembo wazuri.
Sister
Nina dada mzuri.
Nina dada wazuri.
Teacher
Nina mwalimu mzuri.
Nina walimu wazuri.

 

[lpetrich]

Sometimes a word is distinguished by noun class, like ndege: "bird" when animate, "airplane" when inanimate:

The big bird arrived.
The big birds arrived.
The big airplane arrived.
The big airplanes arrived.

Ndege mkubwa alifika.
Ndege wakubwa walifika.
Ndege kubwa ilifika.
Ndege kubwa zilifika.

One can see some object agreement on the verb:

I love my sister.
I love my sisters.
Nampenda dada yangu.
Nawapenda dada zangu.
Lake
Ninapenda ziwa langu.
Ninapenda maziwa yangu.
Book
Ninapenda kitabu changu.
Ninapenda vitabu vyangu.

Some verb conjugation. Notice a sort of negative conjugation:

I love my sister.
I don't love my sister.
Nampenda dada yangu.
Sipendi dada yangu.
You
Unampenda dada yangu.
Humpendi dada yangu.
He/She
Anampenda dada yangu.
Hampendi dada yangu.
The cat
Paka anampenda dada yangu.
Paka hapendi dada yangu.
The flower
Maua yanampenda dada yangu.
Maua hayampendi dada yangu.
The tree
Mti unampenda dada yangu.
Mti haumpendi dada yangu.
The computer
Kompyuta inampenda dada yangu.
Kompyuta haimpendi dada yangu.
The book
Kitabu kinampenda dada yangu.
Kitabu hakimpendi dada yangu.

Possessive pronouns:

I love my sister.
Nampenda dada yangu.
Your
Nampenda dada yako.
The cat's
Nampenda dada wa paka.
The tree's
Nampenda dada wa mti.
My cat
Ninampenda paka wangu.
Flower
Ninapenda maua yangu.
Book
Ninapenda kitabu changu.

 

[lpetrich]

I love my sister.
Nampenda dada yangu.
Will love
Nitampenda dada yangu.
Was loving
Nilikuwa nikimpenda dada yangu.
Loved
Nilipenda dada yangu.
Have loved
Nimempenda dada yangu.
Would love
Ningempenda dada yangu.
Should love
Ninapaswa kumpenda dada yangu.
Might love
Naweza kumpenda dada yangu.

They love.
They are loved.
They love each other.

Wanapenda.
Wanapendwa.
Wanapendana.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Can and canino are valid terms for the same animal in continental Spanish as well. Perro is preferred informally and in the colonias, but the latin-related term wasn't lost. Many think that perro began as some manner of onomatopeia, since it doesn't seem to have any equivalents in neighboring languages.

Curiously, in English exactly the same process happened to exactly the same word. "Dog" is preferred informally, but the Germanic-related term "hound" is still a valid term for the same animal, and "hound" is the Germanic cognate of Latin "canis", and nobody knows where "dog" came from, and onomatopeia has been proposed.

Academic Etymologists Miss the Obvious. That's the Way They Are.

"Dog" has prehistoric origins. It is related to the Latin "digitus" and means pointer. Also, Greek "deiknumi," which means "show" and is the origin of "paradigm."

 

[Copernicus]

Can and canino are valid terms for the same animal in continental Spanish as well. Perro is preferred informally and in the colonias, but the latin-related term wasn't lost. Many think that perro began as some manner of onomatopeia, since it doesn't seem to have any equivalents in neighboring languages.

Curiously, in English exactly the same process happened to exactly the same word. "Dog" is preferred informally, but the Germanic-related term "hound" is still a valid term for the same animal, and "hound" is the Germanic cognate of Latin "canis", and nobody knows where "dog" came from, and onomatopeia has been proposed.

Academic Etymologists Miss the Obvious. That's the Way They Are.

"Dog" has prehistoric origins. It is related to the Latin "digitus" and means pointer. Also, Greek "deiknumi," which means "show" and is the origin of "paradigm."

I have never heard of this claim. The etymology of "dog" still remains something of a mystery. Can you back this claim up with a reference?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Turning to grammar, some things look very different. Latin had several noun cases, while the Romance languages have much fewer. But there is more similarity than what one might at first think. The Romance languages carry over Latin's prepositions, and use some of them to substitute for cases. To illustrate, let us consider "horse's head" or "head of the horse".

Latin: caput equi
(equi: genitive or of-case for equus, "horse")

Italian: testa di cavallo
Spanish: cabeza de caballo
Portuguese: cabeça de cavalo
French: tête de cheval
Romanian: capul calului

All of them are "head of horse" or "head of-horse" with that word order. Most of the Romance languages use descendants of the Latin preposition "de" ("from") for "of". Note also the word-form substitutions. For "horse", the Romance words descend from Late Latin "caballus", becoming common in the last few centuries of the Western Roman Empire. The words for "head" are more complicated, with "caput" descendants surviving in some cases, but being replaced by descendants of Latin "testa" ("pot") in others. The descendants of Latin "caput" in Italian and French are "capo" and "chef", both meaning "leader", as English "head" sometimes does.

Although this is simpler than Latin, the Western Romance languages have some complications. In particular, they have a definite article, a word for "the", a word that Latin lacks. In most of the Romance languages, it is derived from Latin "ille", meaning "that". They also have a lot of contractions of definite articles with prepositions.

French:

• de + le = du, à + le = au
• de + les = des, à + les = aux

The other combinations are written separately: de la and à la. Writing -ux instead of -us is a French spelling quirk.

Spanish:

• de + el = del, a + el = al

The others are written separately here also.

Italian:

• il (masc. sg. bf cons.) di + il = del
• lo (masc. sg. bf c clus.) di + lo = dello
• l' (sg. bf vowel) di + l' = dell'
• la (fem. sg. bf cons.) di + la = della
• i (masc. pl. bf cons.) di + i = dei
• gli (masc. pl. bf vwl/clus.) di + gli = degli
• le (fem. pl.) di + le = delle

All contracted here. The prepositions da ("from"), a ("to"), in ("in"), and su ("on") are similar, though in becomes ne-.

The Uneducated Slur, Transpose, Shorten, and Fancify. The Romance Languages Are Latin Ebonics.

Caballus is actually derived from equus. Ekuvus Kuvus Kubus Cubus Cabus Caballus.

 

[lpetrich]

The Uneducated Slur, Transpose, Shorten, and Fancify. The Romance Languages Are Latin Ebonics.

Caballus is actually derived from equus. Ekuvus Kuvus Kubus Cubus Cabus Caballus.

Pure Goropianism.  Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519-1573) is known for this:

Goropius theorized that Antwerpian Brabantic, a particular dialect of Dutch spoken in the region between the Scheldt and Meuse Rivers, was the original language spoken in Paradise. Goropius believed that the most ancient language on Earth would be the simplest language, and that the simplest language would contain mostly short words. Since Brabantic has a higher number of short words than do Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Goropius reasoned that it was the older language.[citation needed]

A corollary of this theory was that all languages derived ultimately from Brabantic. For example, Goropius derived the Latin word for "oak", quercus, from werd-cou (Brabantic for "keeps out cold"). Similarly, he derived the Hebrew name "Noah" from nood ("need"). Goropius also believed that Adam and Eve were Brabantic names (from Hath-Dam, or "dam against hate", for "Adam", and from Eu-Vat ("barrel from which people originated") or Eet-Vat ("oath-barrel") for "Eve", respectively). Another corollary involved locating the Garden of Eden itself in the Brabant region. In the book known as Hieroglyphica, Goropius also allegedly proved to his own satisfaction that Egyptian hieroglyphics represented Brabantic.[citation needed]

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Can and canino are valid terms for the same animal in continental Spanish as well. Perro is preferred informally and in the colonias, but the latin-related term wasn't lost. Many think that perro began as some manner of onomatopeia, since it doesn't seem to have any equivalents in neighboring languages.

Curiously, in English exactly the same process happened to exactly the same word. "Dog" is preferred informally, but the Germanic-related term "hound" is still a valid term for the same animal, and "hound" is the Germanic cognate of Latin "canis", and nobody knows where "dog" came from, and onomatopeia has been proposed.

Academic Etymologists Miss the Obvious. That's the Way They Are.

"Dog" has prehistoric origins. It is related to the Latin "digitus" and means pointer. Also, Greek "deiknumi," which means "show" and is the origin of "paradigm."

I have never heard of this claim. The etymology of "dog" still remains something of a mystery. Can you back this claim up with a reference?

Links Are Part of a Chain. Anyone Flashing Links Is Pulling Your Chain.

What you hear should not be respected, especially as objecting to such an obvious derivation. Deal with digitus and deiknumi, not with academic scribbles. Those who devote themselves to non-practical subjects like etymology are self-indulgent escapists and not very intelligent. We shouldn't look up to them as final authorities. Apply to them the attitude expressed in "War is too important to be left to the generals."

 

[lpetrich]

A big problem. Latin d- and Greek d- correspond regularly with Germanic t-, like duo ~ two.

Reconstruction: Proto-Indo-European/deyḱ- - Wiktionary

With descendants like English toe, token, teach, Latin digitus "finger, toe", dîcere "to say, ...", Greek dikê "custom, law, judgment", deiknûmi "I show, point out", ...

 

[Copernicus]

...
I have never heard of this claim. The etymology of "dog" still remains something of a mystery. Can you back this claim up with a reference?

Links Are Part of a Chain. Anyone Flashing Links Is Pulling Your Chain.

What you hear should not be respected, especially as objecting to such an obvious derivation. Deal with digitus and deiknumi, not with academic scribbles. Those who devote themselves to non-practical subjects like etymology are self-indulgent escapists and not very intelligent. We shouldn't look up to them as final authorities. Apply to them the attitude expressed in "War is too important to be left to the generals."

OK, so I see that as an admission that you have no source at all for your information, nor do you have any clue how etymologists actually do research. You expect me to trust your intuition over that of people who actually know what they are talking about, claiming that such people are somehow less knowledgeable or intelligent than you. We shouldn't take them as authorities, but we should take you as an authority on a subject that you know nothing about.

So, thanks for nothing, and thanks for letting us all know that you are clueless on this subject. It saves me taking the trouble to try to educate you further, since I have been one of those "academic scribblers" that you seem to detest.

A big problem. Latin d- and Greek d- correspond regularly with Germanic t-, like duo ~ two.

Reconstruction: Proto-Indo-European/deyḱ- - Wiktionary

With descendants like English toe, token, teach, Latin digitus "finger, toe", dîcere "to say, ...", Greek dikê "custom, law, judgment", deiknûmi "I show, point out", ...

Of course, the problem is that loan words screw up sound correspondences, and nobody knows for sure when the word entered English. It may not form a cognate set within the Germanic branch, or it could have been borrowed into Old English from some other historical dialect of Germanic or even Brythonic.

 

[Swammerdami]

In America there are many named varieties of dog: setter, Labrador, boxer, beagle, poodle, terrier, collie etc. The etymologies of these variety names are varied and uninteresting. If a group of migrants arrived unwilling to learn English, they might be slightly surprised by the difference between indigenous canines and their home's varieties, and pick the name of some preferred variety -- say collie, for example -- and eventually promote that name (whether originating in pre- or post-migration home) to become a generic word for dog.

Could this have been the situation when Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain? They focused on one-particular variety, and whether its name was Germanic or Celtic, exercised that one specific varietal name, despite that it had never previously been a generic word for dog.

@ Experts, is this plausible? In such a case, trying to trace 'dog' to some pre-English generic word would be a fool's errand; instead the word would have some obscure etymology lost in time.

 

[Copernicus]

In America there are many named varieties of dog: setter, Labrador, boxer, beagle, poodle, terrier, collie etc. The etymologies of these variety names are varied and uninteresting. If a group of migrants arrived unwilling to learn English, they might be slightly surprised by the difference between indigenous canines and their home's varieties, and pick the name of some preferred variety -- say collie, for example -- and eventually promote that name (whether originating in pre- or post-migration home) to become a generic word for dog.

Could this have been the situation when Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain? They focused on one-particular variety, and whether its name was Germanic or Celtic, exercised that one specific varietal name, despite that it had never previously been a generic word for dog.

@ Experts, is this plausible? In such a case, trying to trace 'dog' to some pre-English generic word would be a fool's errand; instead the word would have some obscure etymology lost in time.

That's plausible, but it's still just speculation. Sage was just speculating that the word had something to do with "point", and he speculated that that had something to do with a Greek or Latin root. I believe that pointers were first bred in England, so there might be some kind of plausibility to such a speculation. Until you realize that the breed was created in the 18th century, but the etymology of "dog" goes back to Old English, before English had gone through the Great English Vowel Shift (GEVS). That is, it had to enter the language relatively soon after West Germanic and Norse invaders settled in Britain. (See  Pointer (dog breed).)

 

[lpetrich]

 roto-Indo-European verbs - it's remarkable how much grammar one can find for Proto-Indo-European.

Like distinguishing between "thematic" and "athematic" verb conjugations. Athematic onse have personal endings directly attached to the verb stem. The present of "to be" is an athematic one:
*h1és-ti ~ Skt asti ~ Latin est ~ German ist ~ English is
*h1s-énti ~ Skt santi ~ Latin sunt ~ German sind ~ Old English sind
(notice the ablaut in the stem; its vowel gets reduced to zero grade when the accent moves onto the ending)

Thematic ones have a vowel in between, something much more common.

There are a variety of affixes that can be used to form aspects.

For imperfective verbs, there is reduplication, repeating the first consonant and sticking a vowel in between. Two other ones are an -n- infix and a -nu suffix, and these ones are likely related. There were also -ye-, -ske-, -se-, -eh1-, -eye- (causative, something repeated), -(h1)se- (something desirable), -ye-, and -h1-.

English "break" and Latin frangô ("I break") are cognates, from *bhreg- But notice the -n- in the Latin word. It's absent from frêgi "I have broken" and frâctus "broken" (passive participle).

For perfective verbs, there is the -s- suffix and rarely reduplication. That -s- appears in the Greek "sigmatic aorist", and in several Latin 3rd-declension perfectives, like dîcô "I say" and dîxi "I have said".

For stative verbs, there is reduplication.

 

[lpetrich]

Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers | Language | The Guardian

Transeurasian is what some m Macro-Altaic, and it includes ordinary Altaic (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic), and also Koreanic and Japonic.

This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago.

...
The researchers devised a dataset of vocabulary concepts for the 98 languages, identified a core of inherited words related to agriculture, and fashioned a language family tree.

Archaeologist and study co-author Mark Hudson said the researchers examined data from 255 archaeological sites in China, Japan, the Korean peninsula and the far east of Russia, assessing similarities in artifacts including pottery, stone tools and plant and animal remains. They also factored in the dates of 269 ancient crop remains from various sites.

The researchers determined that farmers in north-eastern China eventually supplemented millet with rice and wheat, an agricultural package that was transmitted when these populations spread to the Korean peninsula by about 1300BC and from there to Japan after about 1000BC.

... The originators of the Sino-Tibetan language family farmed foxtail millet at roughly the same time in China’s Yellow River region, paving the way for a separate language dispersal, Robbeets said.

Nice to see some resolution of that issue.

 

[lpetrich]

Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages | Nature - journal paper.

The ancestor of the Mongolic languages expanded northwards to the Mongolian Plateau, Proto-Turkic moved westwards over the eastern steppe and the other branches moved eastwards: Proto-Tungusic to the Amur–Ussuri–Khanka region, Proto-Koreanic to the Korean Peninsula and Proto-Japonic over Korea to the Japanese islands (Fig. 1b).

Through a qualitative analysis in which we examined agropastoral words that were revealed in the reconstructed vocabulary of the proto-languages (Supplementary Data 5), we further identified items that are culturally diagnostic for ancestral speech communities in a particular region at a particular time. Common ancestral languages that separated in the Neolithic, such as Proto-Transeurasian, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Mongolo-Tungusic and Proto-Japano-Koreanic, reflect a small core of inherited words that relate to cultivation (‘field’, ‘sow’, ‘plant’, ‘grow’, ‘cultivate’, ‘spade’); millets but not rice or other crops (‘millet seed’, ‘millet gruel’, ‘barnyard millet’); food production and preservation (‘ferment’, ‘grind’, ‘crush to pulp’, ‘brew’); wild foods suggestive of sedentism (‘walnut’, ‘acorn’, ‘chestnut’); textile production (‘sew’, ‘weave cloth’, ‘weave with a loom’, ‘spin’, ‘cut cloth’, ‘ramie’, ‘hemp’); and pigs and dogs as the only domesticated animals.

So they didn't have cows or horses, and they didn't have that stereotypical eastern Asian grain: rice.

By contrast, individual subfamilies that separated in the Bronze Age, such as Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic, inserted new subsistence terms that relate to the cultivation of rice, wheat and barley; dairying; domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and horses; farming or kitchen tools; and textiles such as silk (Supplementary Data 5). These words are borrowings that result from linguistic interaction between Bronze Age populations speaking various Transeurasian and non-Transeurasian languages.

Genetic evidence?

We report genomic analyses of 19 authenticated ancient individuals from the Amur, Korea, Kyushu and the Ryukyus and combined them with published genomes that cover the eastern steppe, West Liao, Amur and Yellow River regions, Liaodong, Shandong, the Primorye and Japan between 9500 and 300 bp (Fig. 3a, Extended Data Fig. 4, Supplementary Data 11, 13, 17).

So the descendants of the West Liao farmers spread westward and northward and eastward, much as other inventors of farming had done.

 

[lpetrich]

The Late Bronze Age saw extensive cultural exchange across the Eurasian steppe, which resulted in the admixture of populations from the West Liao region and the Eastern steppe with western Eurasian genetic lineages. Linguistically, this interaction is mirrored in the borrowing of agropastoral vocabulary by Proto-Mongolic and Proto-Turkic speakers, especially relating to wheat and barley cultivation, herding, dairying and horse exploitation.

Around 3300 bp, farmers from the Liaodong–Shandong area migrated to the Korean peninsula, adding rice, barley and wheat to millet agriculture. This migration aligns with the genetic component modelled as Upper Xiajiadian in our Bronze Age sample from Korea and is reflected in early borrowings between Japonic and Koreanic languages. Archaeologically it can be associated with agriculture in the larger Liaodong–Shandong area without being specifically restricted to Upper Xiadiajian material culture.

In the third millennium bp, this agricultural package was transmitted to Kyushu, triggering a transition to full-scale farming, a genetic turn-over from Jomon to Yayoi ancestry and a linguistic shift to Japonic. ...

Turning to how they did their research, they used a Swadesh-like list of relatively stable meanings to look for cognates.

They used these ages as calibration: (Japonic 2100 bp ± 175, Koreanic 800 bp ± 175, Turkic 2100 bp ± 175, Mongolic 750 bp ± 50, Tungusic 1900 bp ± 275). Japonic = Japanese - Ryukyuan (in the Ryukyu Islands)

BP = Before Present (1950 CE)

Structure of Transeurasian language family revealed by computational linguistic methods | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Finding
(
( (Turkic: 100 BCE, Mongolian: 1250 CE): 2000 BCE , Tungusic: 100 CE): 3500 BCE
(Japonic: 100 BCE, Koreanic: 1200 CE): 2500 BCE
): 5000 BCE