--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > "European and East Asian varieties of millet are identical."
> > >
> > > Where are you getting that from?
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/43178
> >
> >
> > Torsten
> >
>
> Thanks for the link.
>
> <https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-December/021309.html>
>
>
> "Thirdly, dates as early as 4 000 B.C. have been
> claimed for the presence of durra in India, implicating an
> intercontinental movement of domesticated sorghum from Africa."
In the yahoo group austronesian we had many discussions on cultural
transfers between SEAsia, India, Africa and possibly Europe mediated
by Austronesians. Paul Manansala is very knowledgeable on the subject.
> "Dorian Fuller's recent re-analysis of claims for domesticated
> cereals in India, confirmed the presence of pearly millet, sorghum
> and two legumes (cowpeas and hyacinth beans) by the mid-second
> millennium BC. Finger millet is present from around 1000 BC."
>
> There is no trail of millet arriving into South Asia from East Asia.
Picture text from Bellwood's article, in the reference above
"
Map 6.2 Lower Brahmaputra basin and surrounding hill tracts colonised
by western Tibeto-Burmans bearing the technologies from Sichuan which
were to become known as the Indian Eastern Neolithic, an Auswanderung
possibly set in motion before the seventh millennium bc.
"
on map:
"Sichuan Mesohthic and Neolithic >11500-2000 BC"
"Indian Eastern Neolithic ?7000-2000 BC"
Now the technology he refers to must be agriculture. The agriculture
of Sichuan may have been based on millet and rice.
"
Of all the recent hypotheses, that of van Driem (1998, 1999, Chapter
6, this volume [The Peopling of East Asia]) is perhaps the most
detailed and lucid. Van Driem refers to the whole language family as
T[ibeto-]B[urman] and sources it to Sichuan, from where the oldest
movements took place into the Himalayas and northern India, at that
time settled by 'indigenous Austroasiatic populations' (1999: 50).
Soon after this, other groups (Northern TBs) spread with Neolithic
cultures into the Yellow River Basin, to Dadiwan (Gansu), Peiligang
and Cishan. The Sinitic languages later developed from the more
easterly of these populations. Van Driem refers to evidence of early
millet cultivation in Sichuan, but does not specify where this
evidence comes from (note that Bagley 2001, for instance, does not
refer to any early Neolithic assemblages in Sichuan). Since Sichuan
contains the basin of the Yangzi immediately above its middle course,
and immediately above the area where evidence for early rice
cultivation has been found, it follows that this province could one
day produce sites belonging to a Neolithic dating from 6,000 bc. The
problem, so far, is that it has not done so; again, perhaps the
relevant sites are buried. The alternative is to apply the reasoning
behind the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis and to place the
homeland of ST in the agricultural heartland area of Central China.
Whether this heartland extended into Sichuan is a matter for future
archaeologists to decide.
Van Driem's reconstructions bring up questions for both archaeologists
and linguists to consider. The linguists need to consider the effects
on ST (or TB) geography of the historical fact of Sinitic expansion.
Language families, during the courses of their evolution, can
sometimes automatically erase the evidence of their origins as their
component native-speaker populations shuffle and reshuffle across the
landscape. ST surely suffers in a major way from this problem, such
that much of the diversity that might have derived from Neolithic
foundation spread in Central China will have been masked by subsequent
Sinitic expansion since Shang and Zhou times.
"
> In any case the dates are too early to match with the supposed
> arrival of "IE" speakers.
No one said they did. Millet was found in the Harappan culture, though.
http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/nov2001/491.pdf
As late as 1990 millet in China was only 2-3000 yrs old
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/millet.html
That has changed dramatically.
Torsten