Proto-Indo-European kinship

Linguistic paleontology is the use of reconstructed vocabulary to shed light on the society — its culture, its location — associated with a particular proto-language.

A large number of kinship terms have been reconstructed. They are agreed in pointing to a society that was patriarchal, patrilocal (the bride leaving her household to join that of her husband’s family), and patrilineal (descent reckoned by the male line).

While there exist many special terms for relatives by marriage on the husband’s side, like *daiwer- "husband’s brother", fewer corresponding terms on the wife’s side can be reconstructed for the protolanguage. The terms vary from dialect to dialect, providing good evidence for patrilocal marriage in the original society. Similarly, the term for "daughter-in-law" came to mean "bride" in some branches, suggesting the perspective of the husband's family when the new bride arrives.

Proto-Indo-European religion

For the Indo-European-speaking society, we can reconstruct with certainty the word for “god,” *deiw-os, and the two-word name of the chief deity of the pantheon, *dyeu-pter- (Latin Iūpiter, Greek Zeus patēr, Sanskrit Dyauṣ pitar, and Luvian Tatis Tiwaz).

The functions of king and priest were different aspects of a single function of sovereignty. Oral prayers, requests of the deity, and other ritual utterances must have played a significant role in Indo-European religion.

The forms *dyeu- and *deiw-os are both derivatives of a root *dyeu-, meaning “to shine,” which appears in the word for “day” in numerous languages (Latin diēs; but English DAY is from a different root). The notion of deity was therefore linked to the notion of the bright sky. The second element of the name of the chief god, *dyeu-pəter-, is the general Indo-European word for FATHER, used not in the sense of father as parent but with the meaning of the adult male who is head of the household, the sense of Latin pater familias. For the Indo-Europeans the society of the gods was conceived in the image of their own society as patriarchal. As Watkins says, the reconstructed words *deiw-os and *dyeu-pter- alone tell us more about the conceptual world of the Indo-Europeans than a roomful of graven images.

Proto-Indo-European agriculture and husbandry

The Indo-Europeans practiced agriculture and the cultivation of cereals, as well as animal husbandry.

Proto-Indo-European technology

Roots indicating a number of technical operations are attested in most of the languages of the family. The Indo-Europeans knew metal and metallurgy.

It was probably not long before the dispersal of the Proto-Indo-European community that the use of the wheel and wheeled transport was adopted. Despite the existence of widespread word families, most terms relating to wheeled vehicles seem to be metaphors formed from already existing words, rather than original, unanalyzable ones. This is clearly the case with WHEEL itself, where the widespread *kw(e)-kwl-o- is a derivative of a verb (kwel-) meaning “to revolve or go around.”

Proto-Indo-European physical environment

From the absence of a general word for “sea” we may deduce that the Indo-Europeans were originally an inland people. The root *mori- is attested dialectally, but it may well have referred to a lake or other smaller body of water.

Proto-Indo-European homeland

Based on the reconstructible vocabulary, we can hypothesize about the location of the proto-language. That is, there must have been a climate that had snow, and birch trees, and wolves.

A common view is that the Indo-Europeans originated in the "Russian steppes", what is now southern Russia and Ukraine. This is the Kurgan hypothesis presented last week.

From there, the speakers took their languages in many directions.

Proto-Semitic kinship

We can apply a similar reasoning to the Semitic family. Here several kinship terms can be reconstructed, a number of which suggest that Proto-Semitic society was patriarchal: while some terms such as "mother" and "daughter-in-law" are morphologically distinct, many terms for female relations are derived from the masculine terms (the feminine suffix is -t), or are not reconstructable at all.

The lack of a special word for "widower" suggests a society in which a man without a wife was still simply a man, while a woman whose husband had died was a notable social category — such as someone who needed to be cared for by the broader family. Similarly, separate words for "husband’s father", *ḥam-, and "father’s kinsman, clan", *ʕamm-, are found, but the feminine equivalents are simply derived from these, suggesting that those categories were less important or basic.

Proto-Semitic rulers

Other Proto-Semitic words provide more glimpses into the social structure. That it was stratified is shown by the existence of words for “king” or “prince”.

No masculine counterpart for "slave" is reconstructible; slaves were perhaps acquired as prisoners of war, the males being killed.

Proto-Semitic religion

There is no reconstructible Proto-Semitic word for “religion” in the abstract, but several religious terms can be reconstructed.

The names of the earliest Semitic gods for the most part denoted natural elements or forces, such as the sun, the moon, the morning and evening stars, thunder, and the like.

Proto-Semitic agriculture

There are many Proto-Semitic terms referring to agriculture, which was a significant source of livelihood. Words for basic farming activities are well represented.

Proto-Semitic agricultural products

Many specific products are reconstructible.

The term *wayn- is related to Indo-European words for wine and probably a loanword in Proto-Semitic. The other alcoholic beverage, *šikar-, was stronger than *wayn-, perhaps fermented or distilled. There is also a word for vineyard, *karm- or *karn-.

Proto-Semitic animal husbandry

Also of Proto-Semitic antiquity are the names of a number of domesticated animals and several words denoting products and activities associated with them.

*ṯawr- "bull" is perhaps a borrowing of Indo-European *tauro-, just as Proto-Semitic *qarn- “horn” may be from Indo-European *ker-n.

Proto-Semitic technology

The level of technology that the reconstructed Proto-Semitic vocabulary points to is that of the late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic.

Of the metals, only “silver,” *kasp-, is reconstructible for Proto-Semitic; words for “gold,” “copper,” “bronze,” and “iron” are not reconstructible. Bitumen (*kupr-) was used for waterproofing. They also used antimony (*kuḥl-) and naphtha (*napṭ-), and manufactured rope (*ḥabl-). In transactions, they weighed (*ṯql), measured (*mdd), and otherwise counted (*mnw) things, and sometimes, at least, found time to play music (*zmr).

Proto-Semitic homeland

This vocabulary is consistent with archaeological evidence for agriculture and technology in the Middle East generally. The most common view is that Proto-Semitic was spoken in the Arabian peninsula or the Levant, as shown at the right.

Semitic is part of the Afro-Asiatic family. This includes ancient Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. All branches other than Semitic are located in Africa — especially the northeast part of the continent — so that the Proto-Semitic speakers in all likelihood had migrated from Africa to Arabia after splitting from the other Proto-Afro-Asiatic speakers in what must have been Northeast Africa.

Proto-Algonquian

The first application of these principles to find the homeland of a language family of the Americas was for Proto-Algonquian, in a 1967 article by Frank Siebert.

This family was spoken at the time of contact in the region shown in green in this map, which uses color to highlight some major linguistic families of North America. Notice that this largely includes the Great Lakes region, although the eastern end of this region was inhabited by Iroquoian speakers (in pink).

One would normally assume, by default, that the homeland is somewhere within the known distribution of daughter languages, but of course displacement of descendents from the original location is also possible.

Seal and caribou

Siebert compared the pre-contact distribution of animals such as the eastern woodland caribou (found across Canada), and the harbor seal (on most of the northern coastline but also in the St. Lawrence River that originates in Lake Ontario). They can both be reconstructed for the proto-language.

*atehkwa
"woodland caribou"

*a:skikwa
"harbor seal"

Trout and beech

Two other revealing terms are shown in this map, which intersect around the Great Lakes and to the east.

*name:kwa
"lake trout"

*waʔša:we:minšya
"American beech"

Bird names

Similarly, the overlapping locations for these three birds  point to a location around the Great Lakes.

*paxpaxkiwa
"ruffed grouse"

*po:hpo:hkwa
"bobwhite"

*ka:ka:kiwa
"raven"

Proto-Algonquian homeland

Based on distributions such as these, Siebert places the homeland at the eastern end of the Great Lakes, between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay (to the west) and Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence (to the east). This includes the current location of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario.

Siebert suggests that a narrower area as the original home around 1200 BCE ("stage 1"), with expansion to the wider region ("stage 2") by around 900 BCE. From there, the languages split up further and any new vocabulary cannot be reconstructed for the proto-language.

Perhaps ironically, this region was largely populated by Iroquoian speakers by the time of European contact (for example the Wyandot–Hurons), although Algonquian descendent languages had spread over a much broader area.

Another view, perhaps reflecting an earlier stage of the language, is that the proto-homeland was further to the west, where the greatest diversity in languages is found (including Blackfoot and Arapaho-Atsina). In this case, the region of the Great Lakes may represent the homeland of a large but relatively homogeneous branch of Algonquian that split off from the western languages.

Proto-Uto-Aztecan

A thorough discussion of similar reasoning is available for Uto-Aztecan. This family extends from the Northwest all the way down to Central America. Given its wide distribution, one naturally wonders where it originated: for example, did it start in the north with migration southward, or vice versa?

Evidence from reconstructible plant and animal vocabulary suggests that the homeland is in the middle, i.e. in the American Southwest and Northwest Mexico, and that speakers moved both north and south.

Uto-Aztecan languages

In the map you can see the parts of the family. Here is a non-exhaustive classification.

Northern Uto-Aztecan

• Hopi
• Tübatulabal
• Numic
  • Comanche, Shoshone, Kawaiisu, Paiute, Ute, Mono
• Takic
  • Serrano, Kitanemuk, Gabrielino-Fernandeño, Cahuilla, Cupeño, Luiseño

Southern Uto-Aztecan

• Tepiman
  • Pima-Papago (O'odham), Pima Bajo, Tepehuán
• Taracahitic
  • Tarahumara, Guarijío, Ópata, Yaqui, Mayo
• Corachol-Aztecan
  • Cora, Huichol, Pipil, Nahuatl (Aztec)

The US Southwest has representatives from many of the branches, including the southern part of the family. This makes sense if it is near the homeland.

Reconstructible vocabulary

The following items relevant to locating the homeland can be reconstructed for the proto-language; the most widely attested are listed first. A word needs cognates in separate branches to be reconstructible for the proto-language.

"Turkey" and "agave"

These reconstructed terms are compatible with "a mixed woodland/grassland setting, in proximity to montane forests." Notably lacking are words for a hot desert, as inhabited by many of the descendant languages — e.g., prickly pears tend to be at a higher altitude, in less severe climates.

Consider the distributions of two species, the turkey and the agave plant. Both indicate a homeland below the line of latitude shown (36° 30 N).

To match the distribution of the turkey, we cannot go west of central Arizona.

A dialect chain

The region shown here is a plausible location for a chain of dialects before they fully differentiated into distinct languages.

North/South: "oak"

The basic split into the northern and southern branches of the family is reflected in distinct vocabulary items for a variety of flora and fauna.

For example, the term for "oak" differs between the northern and southern languages.

North/South: "pinyon"

Similarly, the term for pinyon (a tree with edible pine nuts) is uniform among the northern languages but differs language-to-language in the south.

This indicates that the northern speakers first encountered pinyons when they were still a single linguistic entity, while the southern speakers encountered these trees once they had split up.

Notice that west of central Arizona, the pinyon occurs in relatively few regions. But in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California — the lower part of the paler region in this map — we find overlap of oaks and pinyons, so that is a plausible location for the northern group.

North/South "saguaro"

The Tepiman languages in the southern branch have reconstructible terms for more desert-like flora and fauna such as the saguaro cactus, although these languages are currently discontinuous, suggesting some antiquity to the word.

Southern languages also have shared terms such as cholla, yucca, and multiple types of agave.

A likely location for this branch is therefore the Sonoran foothills of northern Mexico.

The absence of cognate words (even under shifted meanings) in the northern languages suggests that those speakers did not overlap with this region.

North/South split

Fowler (1972) argues for this basic split around 3,000 years before the present (B.P.), i.e. approximately 1,000 BCE.

A likely cause was the intrusion of speakers of Proto-Yuman (part of the proposed Hokan group), currently distributed in southern California and parts of Arizona and Baja California.

Later movements of population may have been closer to 1,500 B.P. (500 CE) as the northern and southern groups split up and some speakers migrated quite far to the north (e.g. Shoshone) and the south (e.g. Nahuatl).

Smaller branches show reconstructible terminology only within that group, e.g. for Aztecan terms like avocado, fig, tomato; and for Takic terms associated with the Mojave desert such as scorpion.

California languages

As we've seen before, California represents an extremely diverse linguistic setting, with related languages spread in interesting ways and in many cases having connections to families outside the region, such as Uto-Aztecan.

Entry of Yokuts

Whistler (1977) gives more detail than the discussion of Proto-Wintun in the Hinton reading that is based on it. We will look at his four maps here. In addition to the linguistic evidence that Hinton suggests, these maps are also based on changes in local cultural practices (evident in the archaeological record) that may indicate new populations.

This map shows many of the languages already in place, but postulates the movement of the Yokuts languages (=Y: eventually Hill Yokuts and Valley Yokuts branches) from an earlier location to the northeast, where they may have displaced Uto-Aztecan (=U-Az) speakers somewhat to the south. Note also the movement of Proto-Wintun (=W-P, i.e. Wintu-Patwin) to the southern Oregon location discussed by Hinton.

This also includes spread of the Pomoan languages (=Po) from their original location around Clear Lake toward the coast.

Movements in Central California

Later the Yokuts spread further west into the Central Valley and toward San Francisco Bay. He further suggests the spread of Miwok and Costonoan languages (two clearly related families) from the San Francisco Bay Area to surrounding areas.

Entry of Algic and Wintun : 700-1100 ?

Here we see movement of the Algic languages (Yurok and Wiyot) from a northern location, perhaps the Columbia River gorge or another place closer to the Algonquian languages.

Further, we see the proposed southern movement of Wintun and possible entry of Maiduan (=Md) from Nevada.

In addition, the Numic languages of Uto-Aztecan moved from Southern California into the Great Basin.

An origin of Proto-Wintun in what is now southern Oregon makes an interesting connection to work by Golla (1997), who finds evidence for borrowing of vocabulary between Wintu (excluding the southern branch, Patwin) and Alsea, spoken on the central Oregon coast. If at the relevant time Alsea was spoken inland, the two languages would have been in far closer proximity than they were by the time of contact.

Entry of Athabaskan : 1100-1300 ?

The last major change in the linguistic makeup of California was the entry of Athabaskan speakers from Canada. They settled on the coast on either side of the Algic languages, in Southern Oregon and Northern California.

There is, of course, much more going on in this map, but mainly these are local movements. Note that H stands specifically for Northern Hokan, since the other constituent families are individually named (such as Pomoan, etc.).