Water monsters

[Jess Tauber]

Interesting. That may be relatable to interesting coincidences in numeral
terminology, pronominal systems, etc. The relations are: North to South on
the west side of the Rockies, Andes, etc., but South to North on the east
side. Big generalization. If one follows Nichols' speculations, people
skirted the coastline from Asia in a maritime subsistance regime. Adapting
inland in most places would have been troublesome because of mountains,
deserts, or large-scale grasslands. Cutting across at Panama, etc. would have
given migrants new coastlines to follow. And cultural advances appears to
have generally gone South to North on the east side in latter times. People
too?

I've got solid numbers of parallel forms for Salishan and Yahgan (in Tierra
del Fuego!) in both morphology and lexicon. I bet nobody has really looked
closely for lexical parallels between Amazonian languages and Iroquoian or
Siouan (though one should note that cursory examination of reconstructed Je
and Macro-Je forms from Aryon Rodrigues made me instantly think of Iroquoian
and Siouan. But I never looked further.

One note: The postural auxiliaries of Yahgan looked an awful lot like those
used in Tupi-Guarani.

Jess Tauber