"Ancient Migration Patterns to North America Are Hidden in Languages Spoken Today"

[Joel S. Berson]

 From Smithsonian.com, March 12, http://tinyurl.com/nzvs2uo .  Abstracting:

"A pair of linguistics researchers, Mark Sicoli
and Gary Holton, recently analyzed languages from
North American Na-Dene family (traditionally
spoken in Alaska, Canada and parts of the
present-day U.S.) and the Asian Yeneseian family
(spoken thousands of miles away, in central
Siberia), using similarities and differences
between the languages to construct a language family tree.

"As they note in an article published today in
PLOS ONE, they found that the two language
families are indeed related—and both appear to
descend from an ancestral language that can be
traced to the Beringia region. Both Siberia and
North America, it seems, were settled by the
descendants of a community that lived in Beringia
for some time. In other words, Sicoli says, "this
makes it look like Beringia wasn't simply a
bridge, but actually a homeland—a refuge, where people could build a life."

This study was motivated by the 10,000 year gap
between migration across the land bridge 25,000
years ago, as indicated by genetic analysis, and
the earliest evidence of human habitation on North America, 15,000 years ago.

Are Alaska and Siberia within the province of the
ADS?  Well, from Alaska some can see Russia.

Joel


Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-migration-patterns-north-america-are-hidden-languages-spoken-today-180950053/#3UDZqhsX0RXf7R30.99
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