John:
>I don't know enough about Korean, Japanese and Ainu to be of much >help
>(here I am weakest).
Take my word: Korean & Japanese are Altaic languages and completely,
undeniably UNrelated to Ainu. Korean can be viewed as the oldest branch of
Altaic and Japanese as a later branch all its own on a par with
TurkoMongolian and ManchuTungus.
John wrote:
>Culturally it appears that there were two great areas of litorrial
>cultures circa 15,000 - 8,500 BCE [...] Jomon - considered to be >ancestral
>to the Ainu is the archetypal culure of the latter, Hao >Binh of the
>former. Whether there was a genetic or linguistic >connection between the
>two areas is difficult to say.
This can't have a connection to the Japanese or Korean language which come
from Altaic well AFTER 8,500 BCE. Altaic is contemporaneous with IE and
Uralic so this doesn't fit. The arrival of Japanese to Japan I would
estimate based only on linguistic knowledge would have happened sometime
around 2,500 BCE or later? Just a guess.
What languages would we have at the time and general locale? Let's see:
Steppe (Nostratic), the remains of SinoDene (pre-SinoTibetan), southern
MacroAsiatic languages (Austronesian, Tai, HmongMien). A MacroAsiatic
language (or two) would make the most sense for Hao Binh.
Wait a minute! Did you say Austronesian? Are you saying that the Hao Binh
went into Japan alongside the Jomon (Ainu)? That would seem to imply that
the Jomon originally spoke a lost language (an Amerindish language perhaps)
which had been stamped out early by an Austronesic language, eventually
called Ainu, by the time Japanese arrived. If I get your idea correctly, my
curiosity has been perked.
The Ainu both language and genes no doubt have been in their area forever,
well, so-to-speak. Longer than the Basque probably. Their language seems
quite distinct for tens of thousands of years but I haven't deeply analysed
Ainu yet. Some connect it with Austronesian.
>Clearly Japanese and Korean is more closely related genetically to >the
>movement across the Eurasian landmass, than they were to people >coming
>from the South
This is correct in a linguistic sense as well.
>So gLeN are we at long last coming close to agreement or not.
This idea needs some fine-tuning but, ick, yes. Lay off me will ya? :P
- gLeN
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