Uto-Aztecan Homeland

[Huaxyacac at AOL.COM]

I am rather fond of Jane Hill's arguments myself. To answer some of Mark's questions:

"But, the first question that I ask myself is how did the PUA linguistic family get into the Americas and into Mesoamerica?"

I don't think any of the language families of the New World "got into the Americas"; at least, the proto-languages that we can reliably reconstruct using historical linguistics go back to a time horizon far more recent than the initial settlement of the Americas. In fact, for most language families I suspect the time horizon is early agriculture. Prior to that, the Mesoamerican linguistic landscape may have resembled aboriginal Australia, with dozens if not hundreds of separate languages that both were old enough but also shared enough loans with other so that they cannot be connected into clear, monophyletic families the way traditional historical linguistics works.

"If you take an expansive view of the Otomanguean family and affinitive branches, there is a general extension of these languages over central, southeastern and south central
Mesoamerica from the Panuco River to Subtiaba.  From there, it is easy to conclude there was an westward bound intrusion of UA (as Nahuatl) into the central and southern area (and in at least two major waves as Dakin and Wichann describe), fragmenting and altering the older Otomanguean languages spread through the region."

I don't think Hill would argue with the idea that Nahuatl per se arrived in Central Mexico late, as an intrusion into a primarily Otomanguean-speaking area. I suspect that the "homeland" of PUA was further north and west than this, in the Occidente or Bajio.

"If UA originated within the Mesoamerican cultural sphere, why would it present itself clearly as an irruption into a landscape of otherwise affinitive languages?  I would still be inclined, hence, to view UA's arrival into western Mesoamerica a consequence of southern migrations.  That does not discount the possibility, I believe, that "Mesoamericanized" UA then returned north with agricultural cultivators."

The spread of agriculture to the north, and the separation of northern and southern Utoaztecan, far, far predates the historically and archaeological documented migration of Nahuas into central Mesoamerica. I believe we are talking about two completely different processes here: one of agricultural spread, and a later one of elite dominance.

I think that the spread of domesticated crops and the related technology set across the Late Archaic Mesoamerican highlands allowed the populations of several different highland basins to expand in classic agricultural spreads. Otomanguean spread in two segments, one from the Basin of Mexico and the other from the Valley of Oaxaca, and came to fill most of the central highlands. Mixe-Zoquean spread from Chiapas into the adjacent lowlands; Mayan may have spread from the lowlands (John Clark has a good model of distinct proto-Maya "tribes"). Purepecha spread in Michoacan, but could not expand very far because it was surrounded by other spreads. Utoaztecan spread from the northern fringe, and thus could spread the furthest, as the new technology allowed higher population densities well to the north.

"If anyone sees any big problems with this hypothesis, I would really like to hear about it since (barring a significant epiphany) this is what I will tell my students in winter survey course of Mesoamerican civilization."

That's my two cents. I'll be interested to see any responses--although I will also be in rural Laos with little or no email access for a month, so I won't see them for a while.

Cheers,
Alec Christensen



















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La muerte tiene permiso a todo

MDM, PhD Candidate
Dept. of History, Indiana Univ.