5 the Expansion of Setaria Farmers in East Asia a Linguistic and Archaeological Model

5 The expansion of Setaria farmers in East Asia A linguistic and archaeological model Laurent Sagart 1. The farming/language dispersal hypothesis The farming/language dispersal hypothesis (Bellwood 2001; Renfrew 1996; Bellwood and Renfrew 2003) claims that the formation of some of the world’s major language families followed from the establishment of sustainable agricultural economies: a resulting increase in population densities led to founding dispersals by populations originally speaking dialects of the same language seeking new agricultural lands; in time these dialects evolved into diversified language families. The farming/language dispersal hypothesis – which should not be taken as an absolutist theory claiming that all language families have their origins in an agricultural dispersal, or that all agricultural dispersals result in identifiable families (see Bellwood 2005) – is an attractive explanatory mechanism, because shift to agriculture will normally produce an increase in population densities, because farming populations with expanding demographies and plenty of available land around them will normally expand to occupy this land, and because once‑homogeneous languages will normally undergo distance‑based linguistic differentiations when spoken over large geographical areas. In East Asia, at least two of the world’s major cereals, foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and rice, were domesticated. With rice, there appear to have been two distinct domestication events, one leading to Oryza sativa japonica and another to Oryza sativa indica. Can these domestications be linked to the formation of one or more East Asian language families? Excluding north‑eastern Eurasia, five families are commonly recognized in East Asia: Sino‑Tibetan, Hmong‑Mien (aka Miao‑Yao), Tai‑Kadai, Austroasiatic and Austronesian, with estimated time depths of 7000 BP for Austroasiatic, 7,000‑6000 BP for Sino‑Tibetan, 5500 BP for Austronesian, 4000–3000 BP for Tai‑ Kadai, and 2500 BP for Hmong‑Mien (see Sagart et al., 2005: 2). Domestication of rice (Oryza sativa) had occurred by 8500~9000 BP in the mid‑Yangzi Basin (Lu 2005: 51; Bellwood 2005: 21),1 and even earlier, around 10,000 BP, at the Shangshan site in the Lower Yangzi (Jiang and Liu 2006).. Domesticated foxtail millet (Setaria italica) appears in the Yellow Valley around 8500 BP (Lu 2005: 51). Overall, the dates for the language families appear to be more recent than those for the cereals, suggesting that the language/farming hypothesis will 134 Laurent Sagart be more helpful in explaining the formation of macrofamilies than of currently recognized language families. Bellwood (2005) has examined the question from an archaeologist’s point of view, noting that the Austroasiatic and Miao‑Yao families, either singly or together as a macrophylum, may have developed out of the first rice‑farming societies of the mid‑Yangzi valley. With foxtail millet, he has detected ‘the germs of a scenario’ whereby foxtail millet would have been domesticated as a second cereal by early rice farmers from the Yangzi area in the process of expanding north, where rice was less successful because of drier conditions. In this chapter I will take Bellwood’s hint and present linguistic evidence to suggest that a rice‑ and‑foxtail farming expansion is at the root of the linguistic macrophylum I have called Sino‑Tibetan‑Austronesian. 2. Foxtail millet and the STAN hypothesis Since 1990 I have been claiming that Chinese and AN are genetically related. Originally the proposed relationship left the other ST languages out of the picture, but I have now (Sagart 2005b) accepted that ST is a valid taxon, and argued that ST as a whole is a sister group to AN within a macrophylum I call STAN. The evidence is of the usual kind: at least 12 per cent shared vocabulary on a Swadesh 100‑word list, with sound correspondences,2 and shared morphology, including in particular the heart of AN verbal morphology (Sagart 2005b, for the most recent statement). In contrast, the Austric theory, which claims that the Austronesian and Austroasiatic families form a macrophylum, lacks a body of lexical comparisons constrained by recurrent sound correspondences (Diffloth 1994; Reid 2005). The Austric theory is almost exclusively based on claims of shared morphology (Schmidt 1906; Reid 1994, 2005). This in turn makes a claim that Austric is a monophyletic taxon difficult to maintain, especially since some of the ‘Austric’ morphology is also found in Sino‑Tibetan (Sagart 1995). The STAN and Austric theories are not necessarily incompatible: an old macrophylum with a proto‑ language in excess of 10,000 years BP, having STAN as one of its branches and Austroasiatic as the other, would explain the shared ‘Austric’ morphology as well as the scarcity of attractive lexical comparisons between Austroasiatic and the STAN languages (Sagart 1994, 1995; Reid 2005). I have argued (1994: 216, 1995, 2005b) that foxtail millet is coterminous with the STAN macrophylum. This makes sense of the geographical distribution of Setaria before 5000 BP. Archaeologically, foxtail millet has been found in sites distributed over north China, Tibet and Táiwān at dates between 8500 and 5000 BP (Map 5.I), but hardly anywhere else before 5000 BP. North China, the Tibetan and Himalayan regions and Táiwān are also the main areas where STAN languages were spoken before 5000 BP under my theory. Apparent lack of geographical continuity between these three areas may reflect little more than regional gaps in the current archaeological record. My hypothesis will also explain the sharing of a term for Setaria by AN and ST. A term for foxtail millet is reconstructed to PAN: *beCeŋ (Blust 1980). Setaria farmers in East Asia 135 Map 5.I Archaeological sites with Setaria italica 5000 BP and earlier (Source: Tracey Lu 2005: 53, with added shaded ellipses). Legend • Current loci of common wild rice (Oryza rufipogon) apart from the major distribution ♦ Prehistoric loci of common wild rice x Archaeological sites of the upper Palaeolithic Archaeological sites where cultivated rice (O. sativa) is found Archaeological sites where both cultivated rice and millet are found Archaeological sites where cultivated millets are found Sites: 1. Yuchanyan 14,000–10,000 BP? 2. Niulian Cave 12,000–10,000 BP? 3. Xianrendong/ Diaotonghuan 14,000–12,000 BP? 4. Pengtoushan/Bashidang 9500–8000 BP. 5. Hutouliang 11,000 BP. 6. Nanzhuangtou 11,000–9000 BP. 7. Cishan cal. 8000–7500 BP. 8. Peiligang cal. 8000–7500 BP. 9. Jiahu cal. 8400–7600 BP. 10. Xiachuan 18,000–13,000 BP. 11. Bĕixīn 7400–6400 BP.12. Dadunzi cal. 6800–6360 BP. 13. Huaxian 5000–4000 BP. 14. Anban cal. 4852–4487 BP. 15. Banpo 6065– 5490 BP. 16. Dadiwan 7150–4900 BP. 17. Lijiacun cal. 7179–6796 BP. 18. Xiawangguang cal. 7210– 4490 BP. 19. Dahecun cal. 5500–4400 BP. 20. Xiyincun 7000–5000 BP. 21. Qinglongquan cal. 5350–4148 BP. 22. Lilou cal. 4142–3725 BP. 23. Lianyungang about 7000 BP. 24. Longqiuzhuang 7000–5500 BP. 25. Xudun 5605–4610 BP. 26. Songze 5330–4550 BP. 27. Luojiajiao 6220–6080 BP. 28. Hémŭdù cal. 7200–6400 BP. 29. Chengtoushan 6500 BP. 30. Chengdou Karuo 5555–4750 BP. 31. Changguogou 3370 BP. 32. Dingsishan 6500 BP. 33. Gantuoyan approximately 4000 BP. 34. Qixia cal. 4873–3780 BP. 35. Xinle 6620–6150 BP. 36. Daundong 2510 BP. 37. Tongsamdong 4590 BP. 38. Nam River localities 4060–2800 BP. 39. Nan‑kuan‑li approx. 5000 BP. 136 Laurent Sagart I have pointed out (2003) that the Old Chinese3 term 稷 *btsïk ‘foxtail millet’ corresponds to PAN *beCeŋ. In that paper I did not cite any cognate of 稷 *btsïk in a ST language outside of Chinese: I had missed the word tɕaʔ55 ‘millet’ in Trung (TBL 417; what kind of millet is unclear), again corresponding regularly with the Chinese word. More recently, a second cognate has turned up: cək ‘Setaria italica’ in geographically and phylogenetically distant Lhokpu, an unclassified ST language of southwest Bhutan.4 The sound correspondences which link the PAN and Chinese forms are recurrent ones in my analysis, despite the unpredictable – though widely recognized5 – alternation between final ‑ŋ and ‑k within Sino‑ Tibetan, as illustrated in the examples for ‘horn’ and ‘rib, bone’. Given the geographical distance between Lhokpu and Chinese on the one hand and the appearance of phonological regularity between the forms for Setaria in Chinese, Trung and Lhokpu on the other hand, a loan will not easily explain the Lhokpu word for Setaria. A word something like *tsək ‘foxtail millet = Setaria italica’ can now be firmly assigned to an early stage of the ST family, possibly PST itself. This indicates that at least from an early stage in the development of the family, ST speakers knew – probably grew – foxtail millet. The finding at mKhar‑ro (Chinese Karuo, point 30 on Map 5.I) in Eastern Tibet of grains of Setaria italica with a calibrated C‑14 date range of 5555–4750 BP (Fu Daxiong 2001: 66) is consonant with this. Likewise, the recent find in Nan‑Kuan‑Li, a Dàpénkēng 大盆坑 culture site in south‑west Táiwān dating to 4500–5000 BP, of large quantities of carbonized grains of millet, apparently foxtail, together with rice grains (Tsang 2005), has provided archaeological proof that the Dàpénkēng culture – usually associated with the proto‑Austronesian language – had both foxtail millet and rice. This is precisely what linguists had been claiming: see Blust (1988: 61) for a reconstruction of the floral environment of PAN speakers including domesticated rice and foxtail millet. In recognition of the importance of foxtail millet for both Sino‑Tibetan and Austronesian, both as a staple and as a sacred plant, I have proposed (1995) that the origin of the PSTAN macrophylum is in the area of the earliest foxtail‑ cultivating villages: the Císhān‑Péilĭgāng culture area of northern China, mainly in Hébĕi, Hénán and south Shănxī,6 beginning cal.

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