The expansion of languages such as Hassaniya and Tuareg are demonstrably recent and a prior history is there to be uncovered.

Abstract

Genetic and archaeological lines of evidence both suggest that Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa sometime between 130 and 50 ka, and that a likely route was across the ‘green Sahara’. However, there is an absence of definitive evidence for trans-Sahara dispersal even though some animal species appear to have done so. To further our understanding of this dispersal, we present a model that considers the different ways humans can affect animal distributions and vice versa. We define three different mechanisms: facilitation, co-distribution and translocation. We then use North Africa during the last two interglacial humid phases as a testbed to evaluate each mechanism by analysing animal, fossil and rock art distributions, molecular phylogeny, archaeology and linguistics. We demonstrate strong evidence for facilitation with some evidence for co-distribution and translocation. Facilitation during the penultimate interglacial can be associated with the dispersal of H. sapiens out of Africa.

Keywords: Dispersal, facilitation, co-distribution, translocation, Sahara

INTRODUCTION

Saharan palaeozoogeography has traditionally been pursued through phenotypic and distributional analyses of modern and fossil animal species. A revolution in our understanding in this area has been brought about by a significant increase in genetic analyses of desert species, new models of the palaeohydrology of the Sahara and a better knowledge of the role of hominins in the dispersal of a wide variety of species. Ancillary disciplines, such as rock art studies, continue to provide new insights into the presence of larger species and human interactions with them. Synchronic ethnography also brings models of human/animal interactions to bear on the modelling of past relationships. This chapter is intended to bring together these new findings and put forward a preliminary analysis of the relationship between human and animal dispersal in the early Sahara.

Genetic and archaeological studies suggest that Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa sometime between 130 and 50 ka (Macaulay et al. 2005; Gunz et al. 2009; Boivin et al. 2013). This is likely to have been preceded by at least three waves of hominin dispersals out of Africa between 1.9 and 0.7 Ma (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 2001), with the possibility of an earlier wave around 2.5 Ma (Dennell 2009), and with additional suggestions of further migrations around 780–700 ka (Martínez-Navarro and Rabinovich 2011) and 600 ka (e.g., Lahr and Foley 1998) and.

Origin of This Volume

This volume is the result of a collaborative project that culminated in the conference “Cultural Transfer in Early Monsoon Asia: Austronesian- Indic Encounters”, organized by Andrea Acri and Alexandra Landmann in December 2013 at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. The event brought together fourteen scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and regional expertise, in the attempt to provide the widest possible framework to synthesize and (re-)assess the broad subject under investigation. Besides providing a venue for dialogue between various disciplines, it has aimed to (re-)focus scholarly attention on cultural phenomena side-by-side with linguistics, archaeology, and genetics.

Conceptually, the conference sought to foreground a “borderless” history and geography of South, Southeast and East Asian littoral zones that would be maritime-focused, and thereby explore the ancient connections and dynamics of interaction that favoured fruitful “encounters” among the cultures found throughout the region stretching from the Indian Ocean littorals to the Western Pacific, from the early historical period to the present. A hallmark of its intellectual framework has been to transcend the artificial spatial demarcations and imagined boundaries of macro-regions and nation-states, as well as to bridge the arbitrary divide between (inherently cosmopolitan) “high” cultures (e.g. Sanskritic, Sinitic, or Islamicate) and “local” or “indigenous” cultures. Indeed, many “local” small-scale societies and cosmopolitan cultures in the region stretching from Eastern India and Southeast Asia to China and Japan were already plural from the earliest times, yet retain some remarkable common features, such as wet-rice monoculture and houses on stilts (Abalahin 2011, p. 661). Religion, too, shows common forms, in terms of dual organization and a focus on an ancestor cult, often vaguely defined as “shamanic” or “animist” (Reuter 2014). Remarkably similar head-hunting and burial practices characterize the religion of Nāga tribes of Eastern India, as well as the past religions of some Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic-speaking ethnic groups settled in Myanmar, and might have been once widespread in maritime Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and the whole of Oceania (Brighenti 2009, p. 92; Hutton 1928, pp. 406–7). A shared core of cultural identity or Weltanschauung across Southeast Asia and Melanesia includes narratives of multiple origins, the importance of precedence, clan and social binding systems, small-scale societies, autonomy for women, and a specific close interconnection of spatial, social and religious differentiation marking centre and periphery.

Introduction

The MSEA Convergence Zone

There has been considerable investment in the concept of Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) as a linguistic area (Enfield 2003, 2005; Enfield and Comrie 2014). Despite great phyletic diversity, its languages show a remarkable homogeneity in terms of structure. Such patterns are often described as Sprachbunds, geographical areas characterized by linguistic convergence (Trubetzkoy 1928; Becker 1948). Sprachbunds have been identified in many regions of the world, with the Balkan Sprachbund the most well-known. Regions of convergence are typically cited in Africa, notably Ethiopia (Ferguson 1976; see also papers in Heine and Nurse 2008) in India, and the Caucasus. However, those characteristics of language which converge are by no means the same in different regions. In some cases, a high incidence of lexical borrowing can coexist with great variations in grammar and morphology, as in Ethiopia. Papua, especially the Sepik, and Arnhem Land languages show strong typological similarities in grammar and morphology in conjunction with high lexical and thus phyletic diversity. A Sprachbund may thus be a less useful term than “convergence zone” which leaves open the parameters of similarity.

MSEA is undoubtedly a convergence zone, characterized by five major language phyla: Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Daic, Sino-Tibetan, and Hmong-Mien. Apart from the Andamanese peoples there are no language isolates. Phonology, tones, morphology (or more precisely the lack of it), word and syntactic structures all show remarkable similarities despite the evident lexical diversity (Blench 2014, in press a). No clear consensus in the linguistic literature has emerged to explain this pattern, but we have good evidence for the rapidity with which this type of analogical restructuring occurs. Utsat, the Austronesian language spoken in Hainan island, is a good example of this (Thurgood and Li 2012). Utsat is Chamic, and would have resembled Malay when its ancestral speakers settled on the mainland of modern-day Vietnam some 2,000 years ago. Its syntax and phonology were restructured so that it more closely resembled the neighbouring Austroasiatic languages. However, in 969 AD, part of its speakers fled to Hainan island in Southeast China and there came into contact with both Hlaic and Sinitic languages. Utsat then converged with these languages, losing all its morphology and adopting a complex tonal system.

The common domestic geese are derived from two wild species, the greylag, Anser anser, and the swan goose, Anser cygnoides. The wild greylag is found seasonally throughout most of Eurasia and North Africa, although it is not known to breed south of 45° latitude. The swan goose is confined to East Asia, although the two can freely hybridize at the meeting point of their ranges. It has been argued that the Indian barheaded goose, Anser indicus, also played a part in the evolution of domestic geese, because it is interfertile with the aforementioned species (Crawford 1984).

Geese are easily domesticated, and this process probably occurred numerous times. Moreover, the continuing presence of the greylag suggests that there was constant introgression from the wild form, accounting for Charles Darwin’s observation that “the amount of variation that it has undergone, as compared with that of most domesticated animals, is singularly small’ (cited in Crawford 1984: 345).

Other species of geese have been domesticated on an experimental basis in ancient or modern times. These are:

Canada goose Branta canadensis

White-fronted goose Anser albifrons

Egyptian goose Alopochen aegyptiaca

Spur-winged goose Plectopterus gambensis

However, none of these birds have attained commercial importance.

Despite their distribution, domestic geese are poorly documented across their range, especially the Chinese swan goose, which is virtually absent from all discussions of Chinese animal husbandry. Geese bones, due to their greater size and fragility, are often more comminuted in archaeological deposits than those of chickens and small game birds. Nonetheless, the lack of reports of goose bones from archaeological sites may reflect more the prejudices of archaeology than a real absence.

Origins

The chicken (Gallus gallus or Gallus domesticus) is generally considered to have evolved from the jungle fowl (G. gallus), which ranges throughout the area between eastern India and Java. Within the nomenclature, G. domesticus is normally used by scholars who believe in a polyphyletic origin for the domestic chicken (from G. gallus, Gallus sonnerati, and Gallus lafayettei), whereas G. gallus is used by those who support a unique origin from the various subspecies of wild G. gallus. Debates regarding the origin and spread of the domestic chicken focus both on its genetic basis and the “hearth area” of its initial domestication.

The osteological identification of domestic chickens has been made both on a contextual basis (i.e., the occurrence of Gallus bones outside of the birds' normal wild range) and on osteometric grounds (i.e., the occurrence of bones that are larger than those of modern wild jungle fowl and therefore would seem to be the result of selective breeding). Recent research of this nature has resulted in a radical revision of the standard view of the domestication of the chicken. The presence of domestic fowl bones in third-millennium-B.C. archaeological excavation contexts at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan led earlier writers (Zeuner 1963; Crawford 1984) to assume that the chicken was first domesticated in this area. However, in 1988, B. West and B.-X. Zhou presented archaeological data showing domestic chickens to be present at China’s Yangshao and Peiligan Neolithic sites, which dated from circa 6000 to 4000 B.C. As a consequence, because wild forms of Gallus are entirely absent in China, and as the climate would have been inimical to them in the early Holocene, it seems likely that chickens were domesticated elsewhere at an even earlier date. In the absence of evidence from India, Southeast Asia (i.e., Thailand) has been put forward as a likely hearth area (West and Zhou 1988).