QuoteReplyTopic: Hemudu/Liangzhu's link to Austronesian tenable? Posted: 17-Jun-2014 at 17:24
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** I had once been reassured by people on another forum, that because there
exists a physical relation
chart which positioned ancient neolithic peoples of China (living on the
Yangtze) with modern Malaysians, there was reason enough to presume
ancient Hemudu/Liangzhu peoples were not Sinitic. It is a claim by
which most other evidence does not point to. Hemudu/Liangzhu were made
out to be Austronesian peoples based on conceptualized physical traits
and male markers. I would like
to take the opportunity to discuss linguistically applied archaeological
methods and materials which
have more pragmatic meaning to point out
the absurdity of that claim. In the end I'll let viewers decide on
whether to take a physical relation chart or Y markers as seriously as
some people
would. ********** Now before I go on about Austronesians
let me first make sure people know what I'm talking about when I say
Hemudu/Liangzhu. Why are those two connected? ********** For now, all you
need to understand is that Hemudu was the neolithic culture known to
have initialized black pottery culture, which had been the
characteristic pottery indicator used to show that a later culture
belonged to the Longshan horizon. The Longshan Horizon is a term which
means the same thing as "the Chinese interaction sphere", which didn't
emerge until the late neolithic period of China and was a
cultural-historical range which lasted between 3500 BCE and 1600 BCE.
Hemudu,
while being the initializer of black pottery, was a good 1500 years
prior to the formation of Liangzhu culture and the actual Longshan
period. However, Liangzhu, while displaying the civilizational
advancements of the Longshan horizon, continued nonetheless to spread
the culture of this ancient craft, which was well received by all areas
known to be Longshan. While Hemudu's culture began in 5000 BCE,
Liangzhu's culture began in 3500 BCE and could be seen as a continuation
as they were both resident within the same areas of China. Liangzhu
was situated at the beginning of the Longshan horizon and for various
other reasons, including the noted black pottery, considered to be the
actual start of the horizon. One final thing, they both farmed rice,
little millet, if any. **********
Polished black pottery styles helps us define the Longshan Horizon and connects Liangzhu to Hemudu ********** Now onward to Austronesians. ********** The
main thing for Austronesians is to consider the fact that many
linguists trace their beginnings to Austronesians in Taiwan, in other
words, where their proto linguistic variations of Austronesian or PAN,
proto-Austronesan, came out of. However, prior to PAN's formation there
were areas in China to which PAN can and ought to be ancestrally
traced/referenced to. PAN obviously cannot exist Ex nihilo ("out of
nothing"). So the obvious question is where did they come from?
Linguists like Laurent Sagart now trace this pre-PAN to the millet
farming communities of Cishan-Peiligang.
Cishan-Peiligang first
existed around 6500 BCE, a good 1500 years prior to even Hemudu. Their
communities farmed millet and had a distinctive painted pottery style in
the subsequent phase of their culture, the Yangshao.
But should
one ask why was millet so important, how do we make sense of millet?
Well, aside from Austronesians, there are Tibeto-Burmans. These are
people to whom Laurent Sagart traced pre-Pan to, within the context of
mainland China. Millet is the sacred crop for Tibeto-Burmans living in
Nagaland and for Austronesians living in Taiwan alike. So it was by
directly observing that Sagart came to see the deeper connection between
Austronesians and Tibeto-Burmans. However, the domestication of millet
first took place in Cishan-Peiligang, in the upper Yellow River, which
isn't exactly the place one would expect to find either population given
their current coordinates. Yet that is the place where Sagart's
attention naturally turned in order to investigate the known phenomenon
of millet harvesting in both Tibeto-Burman and Austronesian societies.
Sagart
made a comparison of Taiwanese Austronesian to Tibeto-Burman cultural
root words and a great deal of them matched. Apparently anything over
10 percent of the Swadesh checklist guaranteed a connection. The key
thing he found was that the term for millet, the staple crop for both
their diets, matched in lexical morphology as well as phonology.
Therefore, both Tibeto-Burmans in China and Austronesians in Taiwan
received the tradition of the sacred millet harvest directly out of
linguistic developments which extended from Cishan-Peiligang. **********
In
recognition of the importance of foxtail millet for both Sino-Tibetan
and Austronesian, both as a staple and as a sacred plant, I have
proposed (1995) that the origin of the PSTAN macrophylum is in the area
of the earliest foxtailcultivating villages: the Císhān-Péilĭgāng
culture area of northern China, mainly in Hébĕi, Hénán and south
Shănxī,6 beginning cal. 8500 BP. I think of Proto-STAN as the language
of these earliest foxtail farmers.
When Sagart says
Sino-Tibetan here he really means Tibeto-Burman only as his study only
made comparisons of Austronesian with Tibeto-Burman words. **********
Millet and cord-impressed/painted pottery connected Tibeto-Burmans to Austronesians in Cishan-Peiligang ********** So where does this information leave us? How would we possibly make a comparison of Hemudu/Liangzhu to Austronesian if:
1) Hemudu/Liangzhu didn't farm millet (they farmed rice) 2)
No pottery/artifacts relating to the Cishan-Peiligang/Dapenkeng such as
painted/cord-decorated ware, urn burials, pit dwellings, tooth pulling,
can be found (they had polished black pottery, tenon mortise
architecture, burial mounds, jade, silk, etc.) 3) No Austronesian
substrate exists within the current linguistics of the area in question;
if other substratums exist they must surely come from back migrations
of the Austronesians, providing linguistic loans (also explained by
Sagart, ie the infusion of Daic via the Hainan entry point) **********
This
is the physical relation chart I mentioned at the beginning. The
Hemudu/Liangzhu are not present within the comparisons but even if we
were to assume that they clustered along with modern Malaysians then
they would have had to also cluster with ancient Henan people as well.
Ancient Henan on the chart clusters more closely towards Malaysian than
to Hans of modern times either north or south. Hans north and south
cluster more closely with modern Inuits and Koreans respectively. That
would make ancient Henan Miaodigou people Austronesian which although
I'm tempted to say makes sense ultimately doesn't as Austronesians have
been developing in Taiwan's Dapenkeng while the Miaodigou were obviously
the Tibeto-Burman branch which stayed behind. ********** Sources: http://www.chinapotteryonline.com/category/pottery/black-pottery http://bruceowen.com/emciv/a341-09s-21-ChinaLongshan3Dynasties.pdf http://www.academia.edu/3077307/The_expansion_of_Setaria_farmers_in_East_Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshao_culture#Phases ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** On another forum, I was also told that Liangzhu's influence was minimal
because O1 haplotype was pronounced in Liangzhu burials but the modern
day face of China stems from a patriline abundant with O3, not O1. I
was almost convinced by the lack of O1 in China that Liangzhu's
influence was minimal even if it civilized China in the past heydays...
Then
I watched Stephan Lansing's lecture about Austronesian expansion and
noted the way he agreed with geneticists in coming to terms with
drifting and bottlenecks. It's a situation where novel mutations can
get introduced into a system but which are balanced in reverse with
diversification being weeded out. Different patches of the globe have
came to experience drift and bottleneck. So I don't think O1 can be
marked as non Sinitic just because most Chinese don't have it. Sinitics
actually have O1 O2 and O3 but bottlenecking produced the
concentrations differently from Austronesians, which have all three.
Other
linguistic families also have the different haplotypes within O but
bottlenecked in similar situations. Therefore each region had had
arrived at concentrations for each type in random events. The areas
were not synchronized to a patriline, before patriarchal social
organization allowed
for natural selection of those best organized. So it is incredibly
naive to just say O1 on the mainland was not Sinitic simply because
other areas beyond it contain higher ratio concentrations of O1. You
have to contend with the fact that society was not always patrilineal
and when it finally became that way populations were already
bottlenecked to a great degree. **********
Professor Stephan Lansing works with geneticists and mathematicians to
override all previous notions of anthropological dominancy models by
male competition. When accounting for the Austronesian genetic data it
appears what can be modeled instead is Austronesian matriarchal
expansion.
Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies
Fiona M. Jordan, Russell, D. Gray, and Ruth Mace
The nature of social life in human prehistory is elusive, yet knowing how kinship systems evolve is critical
for understanding population history and cultural diversity.
Post-marital residence rules specify sex-specific dispersal and
kin association, influencing the pattern of genetic markers
across populations. Cultural phylogenetics allows us to practise ‘virtual archaeology’ on these aspects of social life that leave no trace in the archaeological record. Here we show that early Austronesian societies practised matrilocal post-marital residence. Using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo comparative method implemented in a Bayesian phylogenetic framework, we estimated the type of residence at each ancestral node in a sample of Austronesian language trees spanning 135 Pacific societies. Matrilocal residence has been hypothesized for proto-Oceanic society (ca 3500 BP), but we find strong evidence that matrilocality was predominant in earlier Austronesian societies ca 5000–4500 BP, at the root of the language family and its early branches. Our results illuminate the divergent patterns of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers seen in the Pacific. The analysis of present-day cross-cultural data in this way allows us to directly address cultural evolutionary and life-history processes in prehistory.
The sex-biased dispersal model of early Austronesian matrilocality fits the predominant pattern seen in the Pacific genetics: restricted Asian-derived maternal lineages
and a more diverse set of NRY variants (Hurles et al. 2002). Our
results do suggest, for instance, that Y-chromosome variants from as far
west as Halmahera should not be unexpected in Remote Oceanic
populations. Disentangling the interactive effects of residence and
migration will be complex, but given the known ethnographic and
molecular data, we should now be able to address the issue directly
rather than through inference, by modelling different scenarios about
kinship structures and their effect on genetic diversity (c.f. Veeramah
et al. 2008).
********** A cursory look at the top 10 countries listed to be Austronesian
speaking shows their most highly concentrated O type admixtures to be O2
and O3, not O1.
Indonesia O2 dominated followed by O3, O1, O Philippines O3 dominated followed by O1, O, O2 Madagascar O2 dominated, followed by O1 Malaysia O3 dominated, followed by O2, O1, O Papua New Guinea O3 dominated, followed by O1 Timor Leste O3 dominated New Zealand O3 dominated, followed by O1, O, O2 Brunei O3 dominated, followed by O2, O1, O Singapore O3 dominated, followed by O2, O1, O Solomon Islands O3 dominated, followed by O1 ********** So we now know
Austronesian's expansion was matrilocal, and had O2 as its primary male
carrier. They came from the Yellow River and farmed millet as a sacred
crop, which neither Hemudu nor Liangzhu grew as staple. **********
Tibeto-Burman and Austronesian women matriarchs share the same system of facial tattooing to make the
face integrate into a zoomorphic pattern of a butterfly.
When the
women entered into areas such as Philippines and beyond, they
encountered Papuan society and began to intermarry out of their usual
east Asian male selections. That's why the study I cited asserted there
were "restricted" east Asian derived matrilines while male
genetic components could be sourced from anywhere, which would be reflective of
matrilineal society. **********
The exception may be MTDNA E. It is found in very miniscule amounts within
the context of East Asian specific haplotypes. MTDNA behaves somewhat
differently when speaking of bottlenecking in male haplotypes because
men still carry their mother's mitochondrial dna.
Climate Change and Post-Glacial Human Dispersals in Southeast Asia.
Soares P, Trejaut JA, Loo JH, Hill C, Mormina M, Lee CL, Chen YM,
Hudjashov G, Forster P, Macaulay V, Bulbeck D, Oppenheimer S, Lin M,
Richards MB.
Modern humans have been living in Island
Southeast Asia (ISEA) for at least 50,000 years. Largely because of the
influence of linguistic studies, however, which have a shallow time
depth, the attention of archaeologists and geneticists has usually been
focused on the last 6000 years - in particular, on a proposed Neolithic
dispersal from China and Taiwan. Here we use complete mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) genome sequencing to spotlight some earlier processes that
clearly had a major role in the demographic history of the region but
have hitherto been unrecognised. We show that haplogroup E, an important
component of mtDNA diversity in the region, evolved in situ over the
last 35,000 years and expanded dramatically throughout ISEA around the
beginning of the Holocene, at the time when the ancient continent of
Sundaland was being broken up into the present-day archipelago by rising
sea levels. It reached Taiwan and Near Oceania more recently, within
the last approximately 8000 years. This suggests that global warming and
sea-level rises at the end of the Ice Age, 15,000-7000 years ago, were
the main forces shaping modern human diversity in the region.
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** **********
I've also been shown articles, such as the one I link below, which are erroneously interpreted by those who don't want Hemudu/Liangzhu to be
Sinitic. The articles are skewed beyond their original representation as saying something about a
specific haplotype when the aim of the article analyzes a haplotype for
its behaviors in order to make very specific statements about specific
population clusters. People incorrectly take Sino-Tibetan and say it is
canvassed by these articles to be O3 only.
Y-chromosome O3 Haplogroup Diversity in Sino-Tibetan Populations Reveals Two Migration Routes into the Eastern Himalayas
The eastern Himalayas are located near the southern entrance through
which early modern humans expanded into East Asia. The genetic structure
in this region is therefore of great importance in the study of East
Asian origins. However, few genetic studies have been performed on the
Sino-Tibetan populations (Luoba and Deng) in this region. Here, we
analyzed the Y-chromosome diversity of the two populations. The Luoba
possessed haplogroups D, N, O, J, Q, and R, indicating gene flow from
Tibetans, as well as the western and northern Eurasians. The Deng
exhibited haplogroups O, D, N, and C, similar to most Sino-Tibetan
populations in the east. Short tandem repeat (STR) diversity within
the dominant haplogroup O3 in Sino-Tibetan populations showed that the
Luoba are genetically close to Tibetans and the Deng are close to the
Qiang. The Qiang had the greatest diversity of Sino-Tibetan
populations, supporting the view of this population being the oldest in
the family. The lowest diversity occurred in the eastern
Himalayas, suggesting that this area was an endpoint for the expansion
of Sino-Tibetan people. Thus, we have shown that populations with
haplogroup O3 moved into the eastern Himalayas through at least two
routes.
There was no admission Qiang invented Sinitic
civilization's attributes nor lingua franca. However, they can be
considered the oldest within the category of those speakers whom use the language family of
Sino-Tibetan. To be specific they are Tibeto-Burman and genetically
related to Austronesian linguistics. Qiang may have been the earliest
predecessors of the Zhou demographic whom arrived into China from
northwest. Prior to setting up shop in the north, they may have been
situated alongside the Qiang. For info on Zhou/Tibeto-Burman
linguistics:
http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=34739 ********** And remember the reference to professor Stephan Lansing? It would appear the Qiang were matrilocal for a very long time since they retain the greatest diversity of men's haplotypes. ********** While it didn't make a difference whether Austronesian was O1 O2 or O3 due to matrilocal residence patterns, it would make a difference for Liangzhu because Liangzhu was patrilocal.
http://bruceowen.com/emciv/341-08s-20-ChinaLongshan.pdf Archaeology shows us the patrilocal nature of the Liangzhu. Bruce Owens is a college professor and his course notes reveal the
nature of the Longshan HORIZON and how Liangzhu was the start just like D.C. was the start of America's Federalism.
−the
Liangzhu culture is another example of the Regional Neolithic trend
towards veryelaborate burials for some high-status people
−some very rich graves, often spatially segregated from poorer burials in the same cemetery
−especially in the later stages of the Liangzhu culture
−examples:
−a rich burial at Ssu-tun
−a young adult male
−4 ceramic vessels, 14 stone and jade implements, 49 jade ornaments
−24 jade rings and 33 jade cong tubes (written ts'un g in Wade-Giles orthography)
−cong
tubes are apparently ritual objects, usually jade, that are rectangular
blocks with faces carved on the outside and a large round hole through
the center
−the rings are also probably ritual, votive, etc.; they are not finger rings or personalornaments
−suggesting
that this person was heavily involved in ritual activities, either as a
ritual specialist himself or a patron of specialists
−the jades were very well made in very hard stone, implying a lot of wealth
−some
of the jades and the male's femora (thigh bones) were partially
burned,suggesting some kind of burial ritual involving fire
−burial mound at Sidun, 20 meters high (65 feet!)
−burial of a young man
−with over 100 jade artifacts
−body and jades were partly burned
−other burned burials around the mound are thought to be sacrifices
−square dirt platform at Yaoshan
−containing rich burials
−burials with "extra" crania at Chang-ling-shan
−The Longshan horizon (Lung-shan), started around 3500 BC with Liangzhu culture, became widespread by 2500 BC; lasted until about 1500 BC
−also written Longshan or Longshan
−a “horizon” that spread across northern China
−a “horizon” is the extension of a style (usually of pottery) over a very wide area
−horizons make convenient time markers
−because sites that contain objects in the horizon s tyle must be roughly contemporarywith each other
−horizon styles allow us to correlate what was happening in many different places at thatsame time
−but
since a horizon style may take a while to spread, appearance of the
style in different places may not actually happen at the same moment
−a horizon typically starts somewhere, and gets to its periphery later
−horizons are also interesting because they imply widely shared ideas, probably beyond the pottery style that marks them
−the Longshan horizon apparently started on the lower Yangtze river, in the Liangzhu culture, as early as 3500 BC
−and
for whatever reason, spread from there to the rest of an area of
interacting cultures called the Neolithic "Chinese interaction sphere"
−markers of the Longshan horizon
−wheel-made, thin-walled black ceramics
−pedestal vases with cutouts in pedestal (tou)
−tripod pots (ting)
−certain axe types
−jade cong tubes (square outside with faces; large round hole inside)
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