In response to climate change? Population and language dynamics in Northeast Asia
Linguists have long organized the world's languages into family trees. In our past ERC-funded research, our group drew neat branches to show how the ancestral Transeurasian language gave rise to Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic languages. We told a story of inheritance, of ancestral Transeurasian words and grammars persisting through time, modified only slightly by each passing generation. In addition to identifying this common linguistic component of “Transeurasian” ancestry, we found that the histories of the speakers of these languages were also linked by a common genetic component of so-called “Amur” ancestry and a common cultural component of millet farming. This view of languages passed down vertically from Neolithic times onwards from one common ancestor, matching a vertical transfer of a genetic profile and a common mode of subsistence of their speakers, is a powerful way to visualize history. It is a clean and satisfying picture. But it is also incomplete.
The reality of Transeurasian linguistic history is far more involved. It is a story not just of descent but of also of contact. Throughout human history, populations have met, interacted, and mingled, and with them, not only their economies but also their languages have done the same. As the Transeurasian speakers gradually moved from their homeland in Northeast Asia to their present-day locations, they reached different ecological environments inhabited by local populations, speaking different languages, carrying different genetic profiles and using different subsistence strategies to survive. From an archaeological point of view, people shifted from millet agriculture, to more diverse crop packages, animal husbandry, pastoralism or even reverted to hunting-gathering. From a genetic point of view, there is evidence for population admixture due to intermarrying with local populations.
Some of these local populations decided to abandon their own language and shifted to the language of the Transeurasian newcomers, others maintained their language and only exchanged some words or other language structures. Either way, the local populations left an imprint of their own language in the Transeurasian languages, be it through learning imperfections in the process of language shift or through borrowing in the process of language exchange. Sounds leapt from one language to another. New words were adopted. Grammatical structures shifted. These processes reshaped the incoming Transeurasian languages and gradually increased the diversity between different Transeurasian daughter languages.
In our current research, we are turning our original perspective upside down: rather than searching for a common component, shared by all Transeurasian speakers, as we did in previous research, we now focus on what made these languages and their speakers so different. How did these language families and their speakers become so diverse over the millenia following their break-up? And how did this diversity contribute to the fitness and resilience of the languages and their speakers?
It is our goal to find out to what extent the linguistic, cultural and genetic shifts associated with the Transeurasian languages and their speakers may be linked in time and space, not only to each other, but also to the major climatic events of the Holocene. These events include, for instance, the Early Holocene Climate Reversal (9000-9200 BP),Neoglaciation (5500-4500 BP, aka Bond4, 5.9ka event) and Megalayan drought (4200-3500 BP, aka. Bond3, 4.2ka event).
We expect that the impulse for these shifts was probably not a single factor, for instance, only climate change, as ecological models would suggest or only power imbalances as social models would suggest. Instead, it must be seen as a complex process resulting from several forces operating subsequently or simultaneously.
We further hypothesize that language shift and borrowing, combined with genetic admixture and adaptive subsistence strategies of its speakers, enhanced the survival and dominance of the Transeurasian languages vis-à-vis other less viable language families, through a succesful adaptation to environmental changes.
The impact of this study may not be confined to the past but resonate deeply with the present. The history of human migration is a testament to the challenges by climate change and extreme events as well as to the power of human interaction and resilience, from ancient dispersals of farmers to recent climate refugees. As our world becomes increasingly globalized, the study serves as a poignant reminder that the forces of human interaction will continue to transform the map of linguistic, genetic, cultural and ecological diversity.
Specifically, our doctoral researchers investigate the following themes:
A history of the Amuric language family and its interactions with Tungusic and Ainuic
Martijn Knapen
It has long been hypothesised that the Amuric languages (spoken by the Nivkh people) are one of the few linguistic lineages of Northeast Asia to have remained after the expansion of the various branches of the Transeurasian languages such as Tungusic. This dissertation shows that speakers of Amuric have long lived with the Northeast Asian landscape and seascape and uncovers various Amuric traces in the lexicons, phonologies and morphosyntax of not only the Tungusic languages but also the Ainuic languages. This provides the first proof that, indeed, the Amuric languages were once more widely distributed in the past.
A stratigraphy of ancient lexical borrowings between Sino-Tibetan and Transeurasian languages
Bingcong Deng
This dissertation investigates the evidence of prehistoric language contact in eastern Eurasia, namely between Sino-Tibetan and Transeurasian languages, focusing on lexical borrowings. This interdisciplinary project applies evidence from multiple lines of scientific research, especially archaeology, philology, human genetics and paleaoclimate. Using language contact as a lens to look into the prehistoric cultural dynamics, it aims to contribute to the understanding of human past in northern Asia: the interaction of different populations, the cultural exchange, and the human-environment relationship.
Palaeoclimate, population migrations and language dispersals of ancient speakers of Turkic during the Palaeoanthropocene
Arda Duman
This dissertation explores how the dispersal, diversification, and adaptability of early Turkic-speaking populations in Northeast Asia were shaped by climatic variability, human mobility, and social interaction—all of which served as drivers of the “Anthropocene Engine”. It investigates the co-evolution of language dispersal, genetic admixture, and adaptive subsistence techniques within Holocene socio-ecological systems using an archaeolinguistic framework rooted in archaeogenetics, archaeology, and historical linguistics. The project is aimed to illustrate how environmental pressures and intercultural contact jointly shaped linguistic, genetic, and cultural changes during the Palaeoanthropocene by placing Proto-Turkic emergence within the Ordos Plateau interaction zone.
