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thanks Dick! impressively topical<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/18/14 12:22 PM, Richard Preston
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:6D4165CE-2869-4F3A-8686-7AEA54F95D24@mcmaster.ca"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
cheers
<div>Dick<br>
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href="http://www.richardpreston.ca/">http://www.richardpreston.ca/</a></span>
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<div><br>
<div>Begin forwarded message:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica'; color:rgba(0, 0, 0,
1.0);"><b>From: </b></span><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica';">Jennifer Preston <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jennifer@quakerservice.ca">jennifer@quakerservice.ca</a>><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica'; color:rgba(0, 0, 0,
1.0);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica';"><b>Fwd: How Linguists
Are Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theor</b><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica'; color:rgba(0, 0, 0,
1.0);"><b>Date: </b></span><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica';">August 18, 2014 at
3:17:22 PM EDT<br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica'; color:rgba(0, 0, 0,
1.0);"><b>To: </b></span><span
style="font-family:'Helvetica';">Dick Preston <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:prestonr@mcmaster.ca">prestonr@mcmaster.ca</a>><br>
</span></div>
<br>
<div>
<div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode:
space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br>
<div><br>
<div>Begin forwarded message:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>From: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">Daniel Smoke <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:dsmoke@uwo.ca">dsmoke@uwo.ca</a>><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>Subject: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>Fwd: How Linguists Are Pulling
Apart the Bering Strait Theor</b><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>Date: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">8 August, 2014 6:42:31 AM EDT<br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>To: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">Jean Koning <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jean.koning@live.ca">jean.koning@live.ca</a>><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;"><b>Cc: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">Al Day <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:aday@namerind.on.ca">aday@namerind.on.ca</a>>,
Pam Palmater <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:ppalmater@politics.ryerson.ca">ppalmater@politics.ryerson.ca</a>>,
Gary Farmer <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:garytroublemaker@gmail.com">garytroublemaker@gmail.com</a>>,
Cyndy Baskin <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:cbaskin@ryerson.ca">cbaskin@ryerson.ca</a>>,
Raven Redbird <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:sfive@rogers.com">sfive@rogers.com</a>>,
Carrie Lester <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lester.carrie@rogers.com">lester.carrie@rogers.com</a>>,
Jennifer Preston-Howe <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jennifer@quakerservice.ca">jennifer@quakerservice.ca</a>>,
Ken Deer <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:kennethdeer104@hotmail.com">kennethdeer104@hotmail.com</a>>,
Deb Aaaron <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:debaaron@newcreditfirstnation.com">debaaron@newcreditfirstnation.com</a>>,
Peter Cole <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:coyoteandraven@mac.com">coyoteandraven@mac.com</a>>,
Anita Rooke <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:arooke@gcna.com">arooke@gcna.com</a>>,
Ward Churchill <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:wardchurchill@yahoo.com">wardchurchill@yahoo.com</a>>,
Blanche Meawassige <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:meawassige@gmail.com">meawassige@gmail.com</a>><br>
</span></div>
<br>
<div> </div>
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<br>
<div>Mary Lou and Dan Smoke</div>
<div>Adjunct Professors<br>
Smoke Signals, #3255 SSC<br>
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<br>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit; color: rgb(127, 127, 127);"><b>From: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">Daniel Smoke <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:dsmoke@uwo.ca">dsmoke@uwo.ca</a>><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit; color: rgb(127, 127, 127);"><b>Subject:
</b></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;
font-size: inherit;"><b>How Linguists Are
Pulling Apart the Bering Strait Theor</b><br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit; color: rgb(127, 127, 127);"><b>Date: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">8 August, 2014 6:33:19 AM EDT<br>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit; color: rgb(127, 127, 127);"><b>To: </b></span><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:
inherit;">Donald Smoke <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:donaldosmoke@gmail.com">donaldosmoke@gmail.com</a>><br>
</span></div>
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<address>Read more at <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063?page=0%2C0">http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063?page=0%2C0</a></address>
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Linguists Are Pulling Apart the Bering
Strait Theory<a moz-do-not-send="true"
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<div class="field-item even">3/19/14</div>
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<p>Over the past few weeks, new scientific
discoveries have rekindled the debate
over the Bering Strait Theory. Two of
the discoveries were covered recently in
<em>Indian Country Today</em>. The first
“More Reasons to Doubt the Bering Strait
Migration Theory,” dealt with the
growing problem of “science by press
release,” as scientific studies hype
their conclusions to the point that they
are misleading; and the second, “DNA
Politics: Anzick Child Casts Doubt on
Bering Strait Theory,” discussed how
politics can influence science, and the
negative effects these politically-based
scientific results can have on Native
peoples.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/08/more-reasons-doubt-bering-strait-migration-theory"
target="_self">More Reasons to Doubt
the Bering Strait Migration Theory</a></p>
<p>RELATED: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/11/dna-politics-anzick-child-casts-doubt-bering-strait-theory-153947"
target="_self">DNA Politics: Anzick
Child Casts Doubt on Bering Strait
Theory</a></p>
<p>It is generally assumed that the Bering
Strait Theory has almost universal
acceptance from scientists. So, for
example, the <em>New York Times</em>,
in an article on March 12, “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/science/linguistic-study-sheds-new-light-on-peopling-of-north-america.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">Pause Is Seen in a
Continent’s Peopling</a>” stated
unequivocally that “The first migrations
to North America occurred between 15,000
and 10,000 years ago,” with the new
wrinkle that maybe on their way from
Asia Indian ancestors laid over in the
Bering Strait region (Beringia) for
thousands of years before traveling on
to the Americas.</p>
<p>Therefore it is usually presumed that
the primary critics of the theory must
be anti-science, like the “creationists”
who argue against evolution, or New Age
pseudo-scientific conspiracy theorists.
Thus in 1995, when the late Sioux
philosopher Vine Deloria Jr. published <em>Red
Earth, White Lies: Native Americans
and the Myth of Scientific Fact</em>
and challenged the Bering Strait Theory,
he was savagely attacked by many
scientists who lumped him in with those
fringe groups.</p>
<p>The vitriol that poured from some of
the harshest critics, such as John
Whittaker, a professor of anthropology
at <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinnell_College"
target="_blank">Grinnell College</a>,
who referred to Deloria's book as "a
wretched piece of Native American
creationist claptrap,” seemed excessive.
The critics also demonstrated that they
clearly did not comprehend Deloria’s
argument. <em>Red Earth, White Lies, </em>embroidered
by Deloria’s wry sense of humor and
rambling musings, shows he was not
anti-science, but rather <em>anti-scientist</em>.
In particular, he was against those
scientists who held narrow views of the
world, who had no respect for other
people’s traditions, who fostered a cult
of superiority either for themselves or
for their society, and who were afraid
to search for the truth unless it
already conformed with established
opinion.</p>
<p>Deloria also argued that science, when
studying people, was not neutral. In his
view, some scientific theories harbored
social and political agendas that were
used to deprive Indians and other
minorities of their rights. Many of the
assumptions that underlay certain
scientific principles were based on
obsolete religious or social views, and
he urged science to shed these dubious
relics. The issue for Deloria was not
science vs. religion (or tradition), it
was good science vs. bad science, and in
his view, the Bering Strait Theory was
bad science.</p>
<span>
<div class="field-item even"
property="content:encoded">
<p>Nor was Deloria alone in this
opinion. Since it was first proposed
in the late 16th century, and
especially in its most recent
incarnations in the late 19th and
the 20th centuries, the most
vociferous critics of the Bering
Strait Theory have been scientists.
Even among archaeologists and
physical anthropologists, generally
the most dogmatic proponents of this
theory, it has always been extremely
factious. And the abuse they would
heap upon each other was no less
acidic than that they spewed on
outsiders.</p>
<p>In 1892, when the geologist George
Frederick Wright published his
massive study, <em>Man and the
Glacial Period</em>, which
challenged some of the tenets of the
Bering Strait Theory as it was then
formulated, he was attacked, as
David J. Meltzer pointed out in <em>First
Peoples in a New World</em>, “with
a barrage of vicious reviews which
were unprecedented in number and
savagery.” One critic of the book,
William John McGee, the head of the
Bureau of American Ethnology, “was
especially bloodthirsty, labeling
Wright’s work absurdly fallacious,
unscientific, and an ‘offense to the
nostrils,’ then dismissing him as ‘a
betinseled charlatan whose potions
are poison. Would that science might
be well rid of such harpies.’”</p>
<p>To understand just one of the many
scientific criticisms of the Bering
Strait Theory, we go halfway around
the world to the continental mass
known as the Sahul, which includes
Australia, New Guinea and
surrounding islands. Like the
Americas, it had long been assumed
by archaeologists that the
Indigenous Peoples who lived in that
region had migrated there from Asia
just a few thousand years ago. It
then came as a massive shock to
those same archaeologists when in
1968, near Lake Mungo in
Southeastern Australia, the
geologist Jim Bowler discovered the
remains of a cremated woman who was
subsequently radiocarbon-dated to be
between 25,000 and 32,000 years old.
Lake Mungo Woman, as she came to be
known, was repatriated to the
Aboriginal community in 1992.</p>
<p>Yet this discovery had already been
anticipated by other scientists, for
example, the linguists. The Sahul 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.</p>
<span>
<p>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 <em>Notes on the
State of Virginia</em>.</p>
<p><em>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. </em></p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Exactly how diverse the American
languages were became clearer in
1891, when the famed explorer and
director of the Bureau of
Ethnology, John Wesley Powell,
released the monumental work, <em>Indian
Linguistic Families North of
Mexico.</em> In his
introduction, Powell explained
that, “The North American Indian
tribes, instead of speaking
related dialects, originating in a
single parent language, in reality
speak many languages belonging to
distinct families, which have no
apparent unity of origin.” Powell
grouped the American Indian
languages in the U.S. and Canada
into 58 language families (or
stocks) that could not be shown to
be related to one another.</p>
<span>
<p>Since Powell’s day his
classification has been modified
somewhat and attempts to link
many of these language stocks
together to create “super
stocks” have met with mixed
success. Although what
constitutes a family, stock or
super stock is a matter of
continuing debate among
linguists, today it is generally
accepted that there are 150
different language stocks in the
Americas. To give some
perspective to this diversity,
there are more language stocks
in the Americas<em> than in the
rest of the world combined</em>.</p>
<p>One of the 150 New World
language stocks, Eskimo-Aleut,
also spans the Arctic and so has
Asian and European relatives.
Another language super stock,
Na-Dené, composed of the
language stocks Athabaskan,
Tlingit and Eyak, and located in
Alaska and the northwest coast
(but also in the southwestern
U.S.), is also believed to have
relatives in Asia, possibly the
Yeneisian languages of central
Siberia.</p>
<p>It has long been suggested, and
the issue is not particularly
controversial, that peoples
speaking Eskimo-Aleut and
Na-Dené moved back and forth
between Asia and the Americas. A
new study published on March 12
in the journal PLoS, “Linguistic
Phylogenies Support
Back-Migration from Beringia to
Asia,” found that Na-Dené is not
descended from Yeneisian (as the
Bering Strait Theory would
infer) but the other way around,
that there was a “back-migration
into central Asia than a
migration from central or
western Asia to North America.”
(As an aside, the study, true to
“science by press release”
fashion, argues that this
supports the “Beringian
Standstill” hypothesis–that
Indians paused in Beringia for
thousands of years before
colonizing the New World–but the
study only examined the Na-Dené
language stock, whose speakers
still live in the Alaskan part
of Beringia to this very day,
and so it would seem the study
would just as easily support the
Na-Dené view that they have been
there since time immemorial.)</p>
<p>Other than Eskimo-Aleut and
Na-Dené, linguists have yet to
find any connection with any
language stocks of the Americas
and those of Asia. Along with
the tremendous hemispheric
diversity, this created serious
doubts about the dates proposed
by archaeologists and physical
anthropologists for Indian
origins. At the beginning of the
20th century it was held to be
at most 10,000 years and
generally only 5,000 years. In
1916, Edward Sapir, among the
most important and influential
linguists in history, countered
the prevailing archaeological
view; “ten thousand years,
however, seems a hopelessly
inadequate span of time for the
development from a homogeneous
origin of such linguistic
differentiation as is actually
found in America.” Instead he
argued that, “the best piece of
evidence of great antiquity of
man in America is linguistic
diversification rather than
archaeological.”</p>
<p>One of America’s greatest
scientists, Franz Boas,
generally considered to be the
father of modern anthropology
and an important linguist in his
own right, in his classic study,
<em>Race, Language, and Culture,</em>
published in 1940, wrote that
not only were American Indian
languages “so different among
themselves that it seems
doubtful whether the period of
10,000 years is sufficient for
their differentiation,” but that
the evidence of extremely
ancient Indians would some day
be found, and that, “all we can
say, therefore, is that the
search for early remains must
continue.” Indeed, Boas was
among the first to propose,
based on the evidence from an
expedition that he led to the
Bering Strait region in 1897,
the “back migration” from the
Americas to Asia</p>
<span>
<p>Linguists were not the only
ones who recognized the
importance of the linguistic
evidence. The great British
paleo-anthropologist Louis
Leakey firmly believed that
the linguistic evidence showed
that Indians were likely to be
many tens of thousands of
years old and possibly much
older, and shortly before his
death in 1972 he began to
sponsor fieldwork in the
Americas in the hopes of
proving this. But most
American archaeologists and
physical anthropologists,
where the dogmatism of the
Bering Strait Theory is most
pronounced, dismissed or
ignored the linguistic
evidence, leading people and
the mainstream press to assume
that linguists were silent on
this subject, even though the
reverse was true.</p>
<p>Starting in 1987, the
tensions between the
proponents of the Bering
Strait Theory and linguists
turned into open warfare as
archaeologists and geneticists
used a highly disputed (and
now completely discredited)
theory by the linguist Joseph
Greenberg to claim that the
linguistic evidence now (after
hundreds of years of refuting
it) showed that Indians
migrated from Asia to the New
World around 15,000 years ago.
The dispute led to a torrent
of scientific papers by the
world’s most prominent
linguists denouncing the use
of “non-science” and faulty
data to back the Bering Strait
Theory. The archaeologists and
geneticists largely ignored
the objections, forcing a
group of linguists–led by <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Campbell%20L%5Bauth%5D"
target="_blank">Lyle
Campbell</a>, author of the
standard work in that field, <em>American
Indian Languages: the
Historical Linguistics of
Native America,</em> and <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Goddard%20I%5Bauth%5D"
target="_blank">Ives Goddard</a>,
curator at the National Museum
of Natural History at the
Smithsonian Institution and
the linguistic and technical
editor of the massive <em>Handbook
of North American Indians</em>–to
write to the <em>American
Journal of Human Genetics</em>
in 2004 and condemn the
widespread use of
pseudo-scientific linguistic
“evidence” in genetic studies
about Indian origins.</p>
<p>The dispute also led the
influential linguist, Johanna
Nichols, to publish
“Linguistic Diversity and the
First Settlement of the New
World,” in the journal <em>Language
</em>in 1990. In her
introduction, she first made
two important scientific
points: the diversity of the
languages of the New World is
due to “the operation of
regular principles of
linguistic geography;” and
that the linguistic and
archaeological evidence from
the Sahul clearly contradicted
the attempts to assign early
dates for the Bering Strait
migration, since the
assignment of early dates in
the New World would create a
scientific anomaly; <em>“</em>but
such a discrepancy–one of at
least an order of
magnitude–must be assumed if
we adhere to the Clovis
[15,000 years ago] or received
chronology [20,000 years ago]
for the settlement of the New
World.”</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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