Agriculture and Language Dispersals Limitations, Refinements, and an Andean Exception?
Agriculture and Language Dispersals Limitations, Refinements, and an Andean Exception?
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DOI：
10.1086/650533
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发表时间：
2010-04-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Beresford-Jones, David
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Heggarty, Paul;Beresford-Jones, David
关于人类史前史的一个整体性的、跨学科的、最伟大的、也是最有争议的观点之一，是这样一种假设，即农业的采用是世界上最伟大的语系分散的背后原因。然而，引人注目的是，人类少有的独立的农业和原始文明发展的发源地之一：中部安第斯山脉。在这里，我们期待这个地区鲜为人知的语言史前，特别是其两个主要的土著语系，克丘亚语和艾马拉语的最初扩张。然后，我们将这些语言场景与考古证据一起设置，以了解农业起源于何处，何时以及如何起源。这些过程的不同时间深度似乎排除了两者之间任何简单的因果关系。然而，我们继续确定安第斯山脉食物生产的起源和发展的重要特质，这需要对基本的农业语言传播假设进行一些改进。这些都是在一个概括性的原则框架内，能够调和的吸引力的解释能力的假设在很大的时间深度与控制在任何索赔的独特性和普遍适用性在最近的时间。安第斯山脉的案例最终发生了变化--这一例外更多地证明了这一规则，而不是反驳它。
Among the grandest and most controversial proposals for a holistic, cross-disciplinary prehistory for humanity is the hypothesis that it was the adoption of agriculture that lay behind the dispersals of the world's greatest language families. Conspicuous by its absence from this debate, however, is one of humanity's rare independent hearths of agriculture and pristine civilization development: the Central Andes. Here we look to this region's little-known language prehistory, particularly the initial expansions of its two major indigenous language families, Quechua and Aymara. We then set these linguistic scenarios alongside archaeological evidence on where, when, and how agriculture originated here. The different time depths of these processes appear to preclude any simplistic cause-and-effect relationship between the two. Yet we go on to identify significant idiosyncrasies in the origins and development of food production in the Andes, which call for a number of refinements to the basic agriculture-language dispersal hypothesis. These are framed within a generalizing principle able to reconcile the appealing explanatory power of the hypothesis at great time depths with a reining in of any claims to unique and universal applicability in more recent times. The Andean case ends up transformed-an exception that more proves the rule than refutes it.