Posted on 05/18/2024 10:30:28 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Nearly half of the world's language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.
In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.
Nichols surveyed 16 features of these languages, including syllable structure, the gender of nouns and the way consonants are produced when speaking. The languages split into two main groups: an early one where the first-person pronoun has an "n" sound while the second-person pronoun has an "m" sound, and a later group with languages that incorporate a sentence's worth of information in just one word.
Further linguistic analysis indicated that people arrived in the Americas in four distinct waves. The first occurred around 24,000 years ago, when massive glaciers covered much of North America. Nichols found no unique language features, suggesting a diverse set of people and languages entered North America at that time. A second wave of people around 15,000 years ago brought languages with n-m pronouns, while a third wave 1,000 years later brought languages with simple consonants. A fourth wave around 12,000 years ago then brought complex consonants.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Based on known genetic mutation rates, laboratory science says that the first North Americans arrived 15,000 to 18,000 years ago.
Also - from memory - there are currently no fossilized human remains in North America that date back further than the 15,000 to 18,000 year time period.
However, there are alleged human foot prints, alleged human tools and tool artifacts, and alleged cut marks on animal bones, that do date back to about 24,000 years ago.
I once tried to read a book written by one of these “linguistic archaeologists”. Such gibberish! I gave up about 1/3 of the way through, tried without success to make sense of his last chapter, and relegated it to the dead-storage locker.
Being incomprehensible passes for intelligence in their circles. I’m reminded of Richard Feynman’s dictum that “if you can’t explain your theory to a cocktail waitress, you don’t understand it yourself”.
They used reindeer and sleds to travel through the arctic. I read a book about it years ago.
Now what data was analyzed to come to these conclusions? Language artifacts from people who had no written records and whose only permanent records are crude drawings?!
A fifth wave came starting about 500 years ago, bringing languages with written histories, mathematics, literature, religion, logic, law, art, and civilization.
The Mayans certainly had a written language, with an alphabet. and a calendar.
And the wheel. Wonderful thing, that.
There may be better source material in John Peabody Harrington's notes than one might suppose. California had at one time the most diverse language geography in North America, with seven major language groups which Harrington documented meticulously. He never bothered publishing anything, instead focusing upon capturing all that could be done. Linguists to this day are surveying his over one million pages of notes.
It is amazing. Where would we be without the wheel, and all the blessings (clocks, geometry, ...) that flowed from it.
History records the names of royal bastards, but cannot tell us the inventor of flour.
Linguists can make “educated” guesses by comparing disparate languages about their origins and relationships. When the British colonized India, they began to study Sanskrit and noticed its affinity to ancient Latin, and to Proto-Germanic. Hundreds of years of scholarship has shown the affinities and history of Indo-European languages that goes back thousands of years. The same kind of scholarship can be applied to American languages.
THANKS
THANKS MUCHO
Notice how these things never spread beyond the Mayas, Aztecs, or Incas. Maybe they were too busy sacrificing the outsiders to educate them.
A study from Berkeley is all one really needs to see to prove this is faked BS.
Now for the content, just how does Nichols know anything at all about the linguistics of 12,000 to 24,000 years ago? Did this ancient people leave some tape recordings behind? Did they find a few frozen folks in glaciers, thaw them out and interrogate them?
“...occurred around 24,000 years ago, when massive glaciers covered much of North America...”
And then the glaciers melted, thanks to all those cars driven by the cavemen. /spit
“1st Americans”
This is not rocket science. To the racists around here they didn’t steal it from someone who was already here as claimed over and over and over. That is a lame false narrative to try and hide known guilt. There was no one here to steal it from... Duh... It is an extremely simple concept.
“And the wheel. Wonderful thing, that.”
The “wheel” argument applied to intelligence level is absolutely ignorant. They knew about the wheel, They had game balls hoop games that incorporated the physics of the wheel. They just didn’t need it so why use it? It is very impractical to live nomadic and have to “rely” on the wheel along with the roads, beasts of burden to feed and water, and infrastructure to accommodate the wheel.
Example South America... With no beasts of burden larger than a Llama or Alpaca, why build road systems across the Andes mountains to accommodate the wheel? All they needed were roads big enough for sure footed mountain pack beasts. The Andes were not and are STILL not very friendly to vehicles depending on the wheel.
In survival there is a fine line between the profit and loss of calories gathered and calories burned. Logic dictates you do not waste calories on physical effort you do not really need.
How about lack of metal use in North America? Is that low intelligence too?
They knew about metal, they had native copper that was traded all the way from Canada to South America. But why go through all the work to build a foundry, smelt metal, and forge metal when it wasn’t needed?
No matter where you are you can reach down and find a rock that is workable into a very sharp and capable tool for the task in just half an hour.
Which is actually more intelligent? All the trouble of foundry infrastructure? Or just a few minutes created from a common material laying EVERYWHERE at your feet already? To this day the sharpest scalpels used for less scaring are still made of stone. They are sharper than any metal blades known.
Logical and rational practicality is NOT lack of intelligence.
Yes, much like Africa, ‘they’ needed a domesticated animal source to be able use a wheel, or ‘ride’. Zebra vs. horse argument and all.
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