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+---- Thread: Bering Strait Theory: False? (/showthread.php?tid=32295)
Bering Strait Theory: False? - mundelow - 03-26-2014 09:51 AM
Interesting article from Indian Country Today:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063
"The Sahul [in what is now known as Australia] is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world, home to more than 1,000 languages, about one-fifth of the world’s total. The linguists had already predicted that the “time depth” required to achieve this type of linguistic diversity was clearly not in the thousands of years, but in the tens of thousands of years. Subsequent archaeological finds have now pushed back the date of human occupation of Australia to a minimum of 45,000 years ago and possibly 60,000 years ago.
The only area in the world that has a comparable level of linguistic diversity as the Sahul is the Americas, and in certain very important respects, the Americas were even more diverse. Since the very first period of contact between Europeans and Indians, observers had marveled at how many different languages and cultures were to be found. Thomas Jefferson, among the leading scientists of his day, wrote in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
Imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact. Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages, so called because, if they were ever the same, they have lost all resemblance to one another.
Today, linguists call Jefferson’s “radical languages,” language families or stocks, each made up of numerous languages and dialects. As Jefferson saw it, this diversity clearly pointed to the great age of American Indians; “A separation into dialects may be the work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another till they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the earth.”
Based upon the linguistic evidence, Jefferson believed that “a greater number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the red men of America, proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia,” and led him to speculate that Asians may have been the descendants of early American Indian migrations from the Americas to Asia."
Bering Strait Theory: False? - mundelow - 03-27-2014 09:17 AM
Sorry for bumping, I'm gonna bump. ^.^
bumpity bumty sat on a wall
eating his curds and whey
bumpity bumpty had a great fall
all of the live long day.
Bering Strait Theory: False? - Alistoriv - 03-27-2014 11:03 AM
Yes it's false the people swam here from Asia
Obviously
Bering Strait Theory: False? - Dr. Brown - 03-27-2014 11:13 AM
It's unlikely due to the lack of any fossilized remains or historical artifacts dated behind 11,000 years ago.
http://www.sfu.museum/journey/an-en/postsecondaire-postsecondary/preclovis
There's a lack of remains from the time.
Furthermore, more complex societies tend to have fewer language. More complex societies such as those in Europe have a limited number of languages due to more communication among larger societies. In hunter-gatherer societies, language is able to diverge more often into local varieties due to a lack of cross-communication.
I suggest you read more about human colonization in Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
Here's a PDF:
http://www.ahshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/GUNS-GERMS-AND-STEEL.pdf
Here's an article about the contentiousness of pre-clovis remains:
http://www.sfu.museum/journey/an-en/postsecondaire-postsecondary/preclovis
RE: Bering Strait Theory: False? - Alucard483 - 03-27-2014 03:23 PM
Certain anomalies aside Brown is absolutely correct.