Farmers and Language Spread - A Critique

[X99Lynx at AOL.COM]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In a message dated 4/30/03 10:26:38 AM, l.campbell at LING.CANTERBURY.AC.NZ
writes:
<<I am surprised and somewhat sorry that Peter Bellwood,... did not take into
account the serious problems pointed out [in Prof Campbell's piece, "What
drives linguistic diversity?  Language-Farming Dispersals"]...>>

Having read the pdf version of Prof Campbell's response, I think some
observations may be helpful.  In order for the dialogue to be productive --
and to avoid knee-jerk reactions to any hypothesis -- it is important to
recognize where terminology may be causing the problem.

1. There really is no justification for separating "agriculture" from the
"social" factors that might cause the spread of languages.

Prof Campbell writes "The farming/language dispersal model... leave[s] social
factors mostly out of the picture,...  Nevertheless, many social factors are
highly relevant to questions of language spread...."

Whatever the problem with exposition, it is absolutely clear the original
spread of "agriculture" (food production versus food gathering) changed human
societies in quite dramatic ways -- probably as pivotal as any other event in
the 200,000(?) year history of modern humans.

The archaeological record shows that in most cases the first diffusion of
food production completely rearranged social organization, social processes
and, it strongly appears, social identities.  In fact, the first adoption of
many forms of agriculture on any kind of significant scale often required
deep changes in the structure of a society.

And it is questionable whether such things as cities and social strata could
even exist in true pre-agricultural societies.  In many cases, before food
production -- or, just as importantly, contact with food producing cultures
-- hunter/gatherers lived very different lives under very different "social"
factors than afterward.

It is not good history to separate the effects of the coming of "agriculture"
from the broad social impact of that coming.  If Bellwood, et al, have not
addressed that unity of concept, it is clear in any case.

The development of agriculture -- or more properly food production --
involved far more than raising cattle versus hunting wild cattle. (For a
better picture of the complexities of prehistoric "first contact" between
farming and mesolithic foraging societies, see Marek Zvelibil, Transition to
agriculture in eastern Europe, in EUROPE'S FIRST FARMERS, ed. by T. Douglas
Price, 64-71, Cambridge 2000.)

So when we speak of the first farmers and the spread of languages, we are not
merely speaking of a mere change in dinner menu.  The concept of
"agriculture" (versus food-gathering) involves far more.  And that includes
sometimes extreme social, economic and even political change.

Prof Campbell's distinction between "social factors" and agriculture as a
factor in the spread of languages is therefore inaccurate in a fundamental
way and does not advance the dialogue.

2. Prof Campbell also writes, "Agricultural dispersal is only one factor in
the bigger picture of what drives language diversification and spread..."

There really is no argument here.  Today, "agricultural dispersal" probably
plays an insignificant role in language spread.  The real issue revolves
around when agriculture first spread -- a singular event in human history.

It is a fundamental observation of economics that once food production enters
the picture, the surplus enriches groups who are not directly
agriculturalists.  Some groups may never have to develop a farmer's lifestyle
in order to benefit from the coming of agriculture.

For example, a mountain tribe of gold miners might benefit greatly by
exchanging their metal for food grown on the plain.  Whether or not they
would come to speak the same language as the farmers of the plain, it was
agriculture that produced the surplus, created the trade and even the
possibility of language change.  In effect, agriculture could also be
credited with independently spreading the gold miners' language. (PS - I
believe there is NO indication that gold had any value in purely mesolithic
Eurasia.  It seems "agriculture" created the surplus that created the value
of gold.)

Prof Campbell's mentions that "Xinkans maintained their distinct identity and
language in face of the powerful Mayan agriculturalists, first as
non-cultivators, later as cultivators,..."   But this tells us nothing unless
we know quite precisely how economic power was distributed and whether or not
the Xinhans were even permitted to speak Mayan (or vice versa).  Exclusionary
practices are a powerful tool for obtaining economic power.  Perhaps the
Mayan denied the Xinkans their agricultural know-how and likewise the
language that carried that know-how.  Or perhaps the Xinkans held the upper
hand by controlling raw materials and used their language to control the
trade with Mayan agriculturalists.  In either case, neither language may have
spread without the economic surpluses provided by agriculture.

The point here is that when agriculture first started spreading in human
history, the effects would have been felt far beyond the agriculturalists
themselves.  There are very few known major human language groups that might
be called truly "non-agricultural" in the sense that they were untouched by
the "neolithic" revolution.  For the Uralic family to qualify, e.g., as a
"non-agricultural" language spread, we need to disregard the intense contact
this group seems to show with agriculture and its agricultural neighbors,
right down to pit comb ceramics.

3. Finally, Prof Campbell also writes:  "It is doubtful that the
non-linguistic, non-social generalizations discussed in this paper take us
more than a short distance towards answering the questions raised here."

Actually, it is doubtful that simple linguistic generalizations will help us
out much here either.  If Gaulish businessmen started speaking Latin
bilingually in order to have a salesman's advantage in both the Gaulish and
Latin marketplaces, and this would lead to language conversion after some
generations in their progeny, is that a linguistic cause?  A social cause? Or
an economic one?  Or do we forget that agriculture underpinned the very
existence of Gaul, Rome and their marketplaces?

The answer is linguistic in one clear sense that is hardly mentioned in
historical linguistics -- the value of communication.

The base, bottom reason that two people speak the same language.  If we posit
that a language spreads because people have a strong motive to exchange
information, we can understand why the radical economic and social change
brought by agriculture often (but not always) brought a new language with it.
 There is often no need for "language dominance" (one of the worse concepts
in all of linguistics) to account for the spread of a language.

The spread of agriculture and language are often treated as co-incidental.
But isn't it possible that it WAS language itself that carried the extreme
life-style altering advent of agriculture.  Just as -- on a smaller scale --
computer science travels with English around the world, might not have
various languages helped carry food production technology and its radical new
life-style around the world?  Compare most true prehistoric foraging cultures
to the food producing cultures that followed and you will see the need to
convey a great deal of additional information between the two.

The hypothesis here is that the main mover of language spread (beyond raw
population growth) is the exchange of complex information.  Whether that
information has economic, social, political or technical advantage, language
will spread -- even against the natural inertia that any speaker logically
has against changing his or her native language.

In the case of the first spread of agriculture, there was a great deal of
information to exchange.  And a common language would be the obvious solution.

Steve Long