From: Alexander Stolbov
Message: 1157
Date: 2000-01-26
----- Original Message -----
From: Guillaume JACQUES <xiang@...>
To: <cybalist@eGroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2000 9:24 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: IE, Uralic, SinoTibetan and incompetent sources
>...
>
> The reason I like STAN is that it fits well with archeological evidence :
> chinese and AN spread from the expansion of agriculture, based on
> millet. This crop was eventually superseded by rice and wheat, but rice
> cultivation is linked with AA and miao-yao people, whereas wheat was
> imported from occident by IE / "altaic" peoples.
> Millet was the predominant crop of Shang chinese, and it is cultivated
> since 6500 BC in the Huanghe bassin.
I think that archaeological evidences are of a very high importance for the
reconstruction of the early ethnogenesis processess (you can find my views in a
little more detailed form in my message of Dec 4, 1999). So I completely agree
with your opinion about the role of millet (better to say millets: foxtail m.-
Setaria italica and broomcorn m. - Panicum miliaceum, to be distinguished from
bulrush m. and finger m. domesticated in Africa) in the destiny of
Chinese/Sino-Tibetan speaking people. Only. (Descendants of some millet-based
Neolithic cultures in the Ussuri and Amur valleys seem to extinct).
> It is also the main crop of AN.
What does allow you to assert this? All my sources say that the principal crops
in Austronesian nations are either rice (in the Western part of the area) or
taro and yam (in the Oceanic part of the area). The place of the origin of these
crops (at least of the species spread in the relevant zone) is SE Asia, not the
Huanghe basin. That's why, IMO, archaeology and ethnography claim that AN should
belong to the same cluster (the Austric superfamily) as VietNam-Muong,
Mon-Khmer, Miao-Yao, Munda and other folks originated from SE Asia where some
vegetables and later rice were domesticated.
Indeed, millet is cultivated in some regions of the AN area (Taiwan, Sumatra)
but nowhere it is the main crop NOW. Maybe you know facts which show that the
situation was different several millenia ago? I'd be grateful if you share this
information.
Alexander Stolbov
http://siem.newmail.ru