Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that ...research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) andArchaeology and Language in the Andes (2012). ‘This book makes a major contribution to the study of the deep, interregional history of humanity in South America. I am unaware of any other volume that occupies the place envisioned for this work, with the result that it will become a standard book to be read or consulted for some time to come. Overall, it is a professional contribution of real significance that will be widely used across history, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, as discussion of the kinds of issues treated by this study of Andean-Amazonian relations is badly needed.’ – Terence N. D’Altroy, Columbia University
Abstract
Studies of Native South American genetic diversity have helped to shed light on the peopling and differentiation of the continent, but available data are sparse for the major ecogeographic ...domains. These include the Pacific Coast, a potential early migration route; the Andes, home to the most expansive complex societies and to one of the most widely spoken indigenous language families of the continent (Quechua); and Amazonia, with its understudied population structure and rich cultural diversity. Here, we explore the genetic structure of 176 individuals from these three domains, genotyped with the Affymetrix Human Origins array. We infer multiple sources of ancestry within the Native American ancestry component; one with clear predominance on the Coast and in the Andes, and at least two distinct substrates in neighboring Amazonia, including a previously undetected ancestry characteristic of northern Ecuador and Colombia. Amazonian populations are also involved in recent gene-flow with each other and across ecogeographic domains, which does not accord with the traditional view of small, isolated groups. Long-distance genetic connections between speakers of the same language family suggest that indigenous languages here were spread not by cultural contact alone. Finally, Native American populations admixed with post-Columbian European and African sources at different times, with few cases of prolonged isolation. With our results we emphasize the importance of including understudied regions of the continent in high-resolution genetic studies, and we illustrate the potential of SNP chip arrays for informative regional-scale analysis.
Linguists have traditionally represented patterns of divergence within a language family in terms of either a ‘splits’ model, corresponding to a branching family tree structure, or the wave model, ...resulting in a (dialect) continuum. Recent phylogenetic analyses, however, have tended to assume the former as a viable idealization also for the latter. But the contrast matters, for it typically reflects different processes in the real world: speaker populations either separated by migrations, or expanding over continuous territory. Since history often leaves a complex of both patterns within the same language family, ideally we need a single model to capture both, and tease apart the respective contributions of each. The ‘network’ type of phylogenetic method offers this, so we review recent applications to language data. Most have used lexical data, encoded as binary or multi-state characters. We look instead at continuous distance measures of divergence in phonetics. Our output networks combine branch- and continuum-like signals in ways that correspond well to known histories (illustrated for Germanic, and particularly English). We thus challenge the traditional insistence on shared innovations, setting out a new, principled explanation for why complex language histories can emerge correctly from distance measures, despite shared retentions and parallel innovations.
The Inca Empire is claimed to have driven massive population movements in western South America, and to have spread Quechua, the most widely-spoken language family of the indigenous Americas. A ...test-case is the Chachapoyas region of northern Peru, reported as a focal point of Inca population displacements. Chachapoyas also spans the environmental, cultural and demographic divides between Amazonia and the Andes, and stands along the lowest-altitude corridor from the rainforest to the Pacific coast. Following a sampling strategy informed by linguistic data, we collected 119 samples, analysed for full mtDNA genomes and Y-chromosome STRs. We report a high indigenous component, which stands apart from the network of intense genetic exchange in the core central zone of Andean civilization, and is also distinct from neighbouring populations. This unique genetic profile challenges the routine assumption of large-scale population relocations by the Incas. Furthermore, speakers of Chachapoyas Quechua are found to share no particular genetic similarity or gene-flow with Quechua speakers elsewhere, suggesting that here the language spread primarily by cultural diffusion, not migration. Our results demonstrate how population genetics, when fully guided by the archaeological, historical and linguistic records, can inform multiple disciplines within anthropology.
Rethinking the AndesAmazonia Divide Adrian J. Pearce, David G. Beresford-Jones, Paul Heggarty / Adrian J. Pearce, David G. Beresford-Jones, Paul Heggarty
2020
eBook
Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that ...research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) and Archaeology and Language in the Andes (2012). 'This book makes a major contribution to the study of the deep, interregional history of humanity in South America. I am unaware of any other volume that occupies the place envisioned for this work, with the result that it will become a standard book to be read or consulted for some time to come. Overall, it is a professional contribution of real significance that will be widely used across history, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, as discussion of the kinds of issues treated by this study of Andean-Amazonian relations is badly needed.' – Terence N. D'Altroy, Columbia University
Repeatedly in recent years, phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data have reached the world's leading scientific journals, but in ways hugely controversial within linguistics itself. Phylogenetic ...analysis methods, taken from the biological sciences, have been applied to date and track how major language families dispersed through prehistory, with implications also for archaeology and genetics. As this approach is extended to ever more language families worldwide, this review offers methodological perspectives and cautionary tales from the most high-profile and hotly disputed case of all: Indo-European. This article surveys the checkered history of these phylogenetic methods and of the cognacy databases they have relied on for their linguistic input data. It clears up cross-disciplinary misconceptions about this new methodology, identifies major flaws in the current state of the art (hence its highly inconsistent results), diagnoses the causes, and outlines new solutions that might bring the field closer to living up to its potential.
PDF
