shijing
The Living Force
Dene-Caucasian is one of two major language phyla which straddle the entire northern hemisphere, the other being Nostratic. In contrast with these two groups, the world’s other language phyla are generally localized and appear to have “kept to themselves”, more or less, within a certain geographic domain, and correlate loosely with specific broad racial categories. This is true (prior to the comparatively recent wave of European colonization) of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, New Guinea and Australia, and the Americas south of where the Athabaskan languages are spoken in North America.
Nostratic (if Afroasiatic is included), on the other hand, spreads from Europe and Saharan Africa in the west to Arctic North America in the east, and speakers of Nostratic languages include a spectrum of phenotypes. The map on the top is “classic” Nostratic, and that on the bottom is a major subgroup called “Eurasiatic” which includes a group of Paleosiberian languages which have been added to Nostratic more recently and are not included on the “classic” map:
Nostratic (minus the Paleosiberian groups)
Eurasiatic (Nostratic subgroup that includes Paleosiberian groups)
The most direct explanation (with modern examples) for why two or more phenotypically different populations speak related languages is that there was an original group of speakers which by one means or another came to dominate another group (or groups), with the subordinate groups replacing their original language(s) with that of the dominant group. This is my working hypothesis for Nostratic, under the assumption that the dominant group was ethnically Caucasoid (= originally Kantekkian), and represented today by people who speak Indo-European and possibly some Afroasiatic languages. This would imply that the following shifts under some sort of elite-dominance and/or admixture model:
Afroasiatic (Africa): partial African shift to Nostratic
Dravidian (India): Australoid shift to Nostratic
Kartvelian (Caucasus): Caucasian shift to Nostratic
Uralic and Altaic (North central and Northwest Eurasia): East Asian shift to Nostratic
Nivkh, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo-Aleut (NE Siberia and Arctic America): East Asian and/or Amerind shift to Nostratic
Dene-Caucasian is distributed across Eurasia in a similar fashion, from Basque in Europe to Na-Dene in North America, including both Caucasoid and Asian phenotypes:
Dene-Caucasian
Like Nostratic, the distribution of Dene-Caucasian languages suggests language replacement on a hemisphere-wide level, and also like Nostratic, it seems to have originated in the upper part of the northern hemisphere descending southward. It also appears that the Dene-Caucasian expansion occurred first, only later to be followed by the Nostratic expansion (with several former Dene-Caucasian areas being overrun by Nostratic). Unlike Nostratic, however, there is no clear ethnic or cultural correlate which stands out as a potential Dene-Caucasian nucleus and origin of dispersal. Given what we have been told about the origin of Nostratic, it seems like it might be informative to ask about Dene-Caucasian as well. The questions I would like to propose are the following:
(1) Is Dene-Caucasian a valid linguistic phylum?
(2) Is the language-replacement hypothesis for both Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian on the right track?
(3) Who were the original speakers of Dene-Caucasian?
The above questions are of course open to modification as seen fit.
Nostratic (if Afroasiatic is included), on the other hand, spreads from Europe and Saharan Africa in the west to Arctic North America in the east, and speakers of Nostratic languages include a spectrum of phenotypes. The map on the top is “classic” Nostratic, and that on the bottom is a major subgroup called “Eurasiatic” which includes a group of Paleosiberian languages which have been added to Nostratic more recently and are not included on the “classic” map:
Nostratic (minus the Paleosiberian groups)
Eurasiatic (Nostratic subgroup that includes Paleosiberian groups)
The most direct explanation (with modern examples) for why two or more phenotypically different populations speak related languages is that there was an original group of speakers which by one means or another came to dominate another group (or groups), with the subordinate groups replacing their original language(s) with that of the dominant group. This is my working hypothesis for Nostratic, under the assumption that the dominant group was ethnically Caucasoid (= originally Kantekkian), and represented today by people who speak Indo-European and possibly some Afroasiatic languages. This would imply that the following shifts under some sort of elite-dominance and/or admixture model:
Afroasiatic (Africa): partial African shift to Nostratic
Dravidian (India): Australoid shift to Nostratic
Kartvelian (Caucasus): Caucasian shift to Nostratic
Uralic and Altaic (North central and Northwest Eurasia): East Asian shift to Nostratic
Nivkh, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo-Aleut (NE Siberia and Arctic America): East Asian and/or Amerind shift to Nostratic
Dene-Caucasian is distributed across Eurasia in a similar fashion, from Basque in Europe to Na-Dene in North America, including both Caucasoid and Asian phenotypes:
Dene-Caucasian
Like Nostratic, the distribution of Dene-Caucasian languages suggests language replacement on a hemisphere-wide level, and also like Nostratic, it seems to have originated in the upper part of the northern hemisphere descending southward. It also appears that the Dene-Caucasian expansion occurred first, only later to be followed by the Nostratic expansion (with several former Dene-Caucasian areas being overrun by Nostratic). Unlike Nostratic, however, there is no clear ethnic or cultural correlate which stands out as a potential Dene-Caucasian nucleus and origin of dispersal. Given what we have been told about the origin of Nostratic, it seems like it might be informative to ask about Dene-Caucasian as well. The questions I would like to propose are the following:
(1) Is Dene-Caucasian a valid linguistic phylum?
(2) Is the language-replacement hypothesis for both Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian on the right track?
(3) Who were the original speakers of Dene-Caucasian?
The above questions are of course open to modification as seen fit.
