wgdavey@zianet.com

All lists consist of names that are similar but there are many ways in which they can be constructed. The basic lists are always of "doubles", that is the examples of similar two letter or two syllable names; these contain within them any examples of three or four letter "triples" or "quads" or even more complex names.

The most fundamental lists are those where we give all links between a single language and all the other languages in the World; we have many lists in this "All Language" category. To provide a broad appreciation of the worldwide linkages, in most of these cases we also analyze the lists to find the number of links with each major region such as Australia or Papua. In the case of the American links we count the number of links with each of Greenberg’s American language groups - we then sum these to give the total number of links with the Americas. Here we also make some allowance for the differing numbers of languages in a region or a language group by dividing the total number of such links by the number of languages present. Although this gives a useful correction that allows for gross differences in numbers our studies have shown that this simple procedure must be used with caution if the implications of the results are important. This is because it is not a simple matter to allow for the degree to which we know vocabularies - the choices of the original compilers may vary and not all vocabularies are of the same length.

However these "All Language" lists are only the simplest way of noting linkages and, in point of fact, are not the most useful. In general we are more interested in such questions as which languages are linked with a given region of the World or with a given linguistic group. Indeed some of the most revealing are list so linkages between different regions or, for example, links between an American language group and the Old World. In these cases although the actual linked names are known the most important facts are the numbers of links rather than what they actually are.

Chains: It seems obvious that a people moving from one part of the world to a remote region would leave some of its people behind at various points and that these peoples would develop different ways of life and different languages. But they would also be likely to retain some of the features of the older people including some of the older names or modifications of them.

However "obvious" this picture is we must note that in fact we can have little or no solid proof that this is correct, and in fact must take matters as we find them. In short, the only true evidence that we have is that given by the links themselves, and we must accept the fact that links exist whether or not they seem reasonable in the light of our conceptions of the behavior of peoples or very difficult to understand.

In fact there are very convincing, understandable links and there are some strong, apparently clear links that are mystifying.

However even though there is much that we do not understand and will probably never understand there is much evidence that plausible links exist. This is true despite the probable fact that that most of the "original" links have been lost, and we are only left with fragments.

The search for such links is at the heart of our studies but it must be noted that the evidence is often very limited. In particular it is surely true that migrations were rarely simple "one-at a-time" movements but surely complex events where peoples swept to and fro and where there may be overlay after overlay of names.

Fans; Primary and Secondary Sources: One of the characteristics of links that we have found is the existence of "fans" of names where a number of languages link back to the same source but not to each other. It is probably important to identify these secondary sources.

One such example is the possibility that the flooding of the Sahul, the land that existed between Papua and Australia at the height of the last Ice Age, caused migrations. This is important because this flooding is one of the rare events that might have affected languages that we can actually date - about 11,000 BP.

Different examples are the possible spread of many separate groups of people from a region such as the Philippines directly to many parts of the Pacific Ocean – this could create a "fan " pattern. A different example of a major secondary source is apparently the remarkably widespread presence of the name of "MATA" for Eye and "SUSU" for Breast over the entire vast region of the Pacific Ocean.

Loss of Links: The most important final comment is actually not connected with the existence of lists but their absence – the case of the Americas. Here we seem to find that all of the thirteen language groups have the same degree of linkage with any Old World language. It seems that all American languages are "smeared out" so that the Old World origin is irrelevant – in other words that any incoming name just becomes part of an amorphous American mess.

This is odd since a distinctive study of the distribution of languages in South America shows the detailed preservation of the patterns of several migrations. Unfortunately, the pattern of North American languages is one of a much smaller number of very large regions that does not lend itself to "unfolding" as in South America; we are thus left with contradictory evidence

We have no solution to this dilemma and simply counsel caution when trying to interpret the linkage data.

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