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DOI: 10.1126/Science.1078208 , 597 (2003); 300 Science Et Al. Jared Diamond, Expansions Farmers and Their Languages: the First W

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DOI: 10.1126/Science.1078208 , 597 (2003); 300 Science Et Al. Jared Diamond, Expansions Farmers and Their Languages: the First W Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions Jared Diamond, et al. Science 300, 597 (2003); DOI: 10.1126/science.1078208 The following resources related to this article are available online at www.sciencemag.org (this information is current as of November 12, 2009 ): Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online version of this article at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5619/597 A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5619/597#related-content This article cites 21 articles, 2 of which can be accessed for free: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5619/597#otherarticles This article has been cited by 87 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science. This article has been cited by 20 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5619/597#otherarticles This article appears in the following subject collections: Anthropology http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/anthro Information about obtaining reprints of this article or about obtaining permission to reproduce on November 12, 2009 this article in whole or in part can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/about/permissions.dtl www.sciencemag.org Downloaded from Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title Science is a registered trademark of AAAS. REVIEW Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions Jared Diamond1 and Peter Bellwood2 described their conquests in writing, most The largest movements and replacements of human populations since the end of the Ice of the major pre-Columbian expansions of Ages resulted from the geographically uneven rise of food production around the world. agricultural populations occurred in pre- The first farming societies thereby gained great advantages over hunter-gatherer literate times. Hence the evidence for them societies. But most of those resulting shifts of populations and languages are complex, comes from five other independent sources: controversial, or both. We discuss the main complications and specific examples archaeology, records of plant and animal involving 15 language families. Further progress will depend on interdisciplinary research domestication, human skeletal remains, that combines archaeology, crop and livestock studies, physical anthropology, genetics, modern human genes (and sometimes an- and linguistics. cient DNA), and dispersal histories of ex- isting or extinct but attested languages. Thus, study of the agricultural expansions ntil the end of the Pleistocene, all whereas most hunter-gatherer societies are is preeminently interdisciplinary. To syn- people on all continents lived as hunt- mobile, most food-producing societies are thesize evidence from disparate fields is Uer-gatherers. Then, at different subse- sedentary and can thus accumulate stored exciting but also challenging: Few scien- quent times between about 8500 and 2500 food surpluses, which were a prerequisite tists possess technical competence in all of B.C., food production based on domestica- for the development of complex technolo- these fields, and the different types of tion of relatively few wild plant and animal gy, social stratification, centralized states, evidence may seem to yield conflicting on November 12, 2009 species arose independently in at most nine and professional armies. Third, epidemic conclusions. homelands of agriculture and herding, scat- infectious diseases of social domestic ani- This review begins by introducing the basic tered over all inhabited continents except Austra- mals evolved into epidemic infectious dis- hypothesis and by explaining six complications lia (Fig. 1) (1–11). Be- cause food production conferred enormous advantages to farmers compared with hunter- gatherers living out- www.sciencemag.org side those homelands, it triggered outward dispersals of farming populations, bearing their languages and lifestyles (12–14). Those dispersals con- stitute collectively the Downloaded from most important pro- cess in Holocene human history. The agricultural expansions ultimate- ly resulted from three advantages that farm- ers gained over hunt- er-gatherers. First, Fig. 1. Archaeological map of agricultural homelands and spreads of Neolithic/Formative cultures, with approximate because of far higher radiocarbon dates. food yields per area of productive land, food production can eases of crowded farming populations, such sometimes raised as objections. We then dis- support far higher population densities than as smallpox and measles—diseases to cuss 2 general issues and 11 specific examples can the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Second, which the farmers evolved or acquired involving linked spreads of prehistoric farm- some resistance, but to which unexposed ers and language families outward from ag- 1Department of Geography, University of California, hunter-gatherers had none. These advantag- ricultural homelands, proceeding from rela- Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524, USA. 2School of Archae- es enabled early farmers to replace lan- tively unequivocal examples to uncertain ology and Anthropology and Research School of Pa- guages and societies of hunter-gatherers ones. Finally, we call attention to new types cific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT, 0200, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] living in their main paths of expansion. of evidence required to settle the many con- (J.D.); [email protected] (P.B.) Whereas recently expanding Europeans troversies in this field. www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 300 25 APRIL 2003 597 R EVIEW The Basic Hypothesis and Six But the basic hypothesis is more often genes, even though the hybrid population at Complications controversial, because in most other cases the each step might have consisted of only 10% The simplest form of the basic hypothesis—that five types of evidence are less concordant. local hunter-gatherers at that step and 90% prehistoric agriculture dispersed hand-in-hand Some critics believe that these discordances invading hybrid farmers from the previous with human genes and languages—is that farm- refute the hypothesis and that farming and step. This is the wave-of-advance model by ers and their culture replace neighboring hunt- language families spread mainly by diffusion which Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza [(16), er-gatherers and the latter’s culture. This hy- amongst existing populations of hunter-gath- see also (17)] interpreted southeast-northwest pothesis would be supported if all five indepen- erers (15). We conclude that reality is much gene gradients across Europe, which they dent types of evidence coincided in attesting the richer and more complex than the simple attributed to the northwestward expansion of replacement of local hunter-gatherers by ex- version of the hypothesis, for many obvious farmers from Anatolia. As a result, genes of panding farmers bearing their own archaeologi- reasons. The main classes of discordance are the modern population of western Ireland (the cally visible culture, domesticates, skeletal as follows: northwest terminus of the advance) are esti- types, genes, and languages, and if all those Clinal genetic admixture between hunter- mated to be derived 99% from Europe’s orig- indicators were traceable back to the farmers’ gatherers and farmers. Usually, arriving inal hunter-gatherers and only 1% from Ana- homeland of origin. Our two clearest examples farmers do not exterminate or drive out hunt- tolian farmers, even though Ireland’s lan- of such concordance of evidence are the colo- er-gatherers completely. Instead, there is guage, crops, livestock, religion, and writing nizations of previously uninhabited Polynesia some intermarriage, especially of hunter- system as of 1492 A.D. were derived almost and Micronesia by Neolithic populations speak- gatherer women to farmer men, resulting in entirely from eastern Mediterranean proto- ing Austronesian languages (Fig. 2, no. 8), and dilution of farmer genes with hunter-gatherer types, with little or no contribution from the the expansion of farmers speaking Bantu lan- genes. If the farmers’ expansion consisted of culture of Ireland’s original Mesolithic hunt- guages out of their tropical West African agri- hundreds of successive such steps of inter- er-gatherers (18). cultural homeland after 1000 B.C. over most marriage and gene dilution, the hybrid popu- Adoption of farming by peripheral hunter- summer-rainfall regions of sub-equatorial Afri- lation at the most remote step would have gatherers. Some hunter-gatherer populations ca (Fig. 2, no. 1). only low frequencies of the original farmers’ in the path of farming expansions succeeded Uralic on November 12, 2009 Indo-European Caucasian 11 www.sciencemag.org 11 Chukchi-Kamchatkan ? A ? Altaic 11 11 7 11 3c 11 3c 3c 10 Sino-Tibetan To Hawaii 3b Tai 10 Downloaded from 9 B 3a Austroasiatic B Dravidian Papuan 1 B Afro-Asiatic 8 Nilo-Saharan 8 1 6 8 1 1 Austronesian Australian Niger-Congo Khoisan 8 Fig. 2. Language families of the Old World and their suggested expan- and Sino-Tibetan, respectively), 6 (Trans New Guinea), 7 (Japanese), 8 sions.Map based on information in ( 87) and other sources.Numbered (Austronesian), 9 (Dravidian),
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