Full Description
Linguistic and Genetic (mtDNA) Connections between Native Peoples of Alaska and California: Ancient Mariners of the Middle Holocene traces the linguistic and biological connections between contemporary Aleut people of southwest Alaska and historic Utian people of central California. During the Middle Holocene Period, Aleut and Utian languages diverged from their common parent language, Proto-Aleut-Utian (PAU), spoken by people who resided on or near Kodiak Island in coastal southwest Alaska. Around the time of divergence, Utians departed the PAU homeland, migrating by watercraft along the eastern Pacific coast to the San Francisco Bay Area. The affiliation between Aleut and Utian languages is strongly supported by comparative linguistics and by the genetic link (mtDNA) of groups speaking these languages. On their migration, Utians encountered coastal groups speaking languages different from their own. Through these prolonged and intimate interactions, words were borrowed from Utian into the languages of these native coastal communities. Other significant findings explored in this book are the lack of compelling evidence for the kinship of Eskimo and Aleut peoples, despite scholarship's long-term acceptance of this proposal, and the discovery of language-structure features shared by Yeniseian and Na Dene, indicating an historical connection for these circumarctic languages.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Comparative Approaches in Historical Linguistics
Chapter 2: Evaluation of Aleut-Utian Comparative Evidence
Chapter 3: Structural Similarity of Aleut and Utian
Chapter 4: Mitochondrial DNA Evidence
Chapter 5: Other Relationship Proposals for Aleut and Utian
Chapter 6: Along the Way to San Francisco Bay: Loanwords
Chapter 7: Ethnobiological Setting
Chapter 8: Archaeological Perspective
Chapter 9: Culture History Reconstruction
Chapter 10: Contributions, Controversies, and Continuing Study
Coda
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
