wgdavey@zianet.com

Overview

The present location of languages in South America shows a very complex pattern where the eight different groups are scattered in a fragmented manner over most of the continent. But the separated regions in which each group are now located must have had some previous connection and we assume that an envelope drawn around the present locations of all areas of a given group gives the possible minimum previous extent of that group. That is, we assume that the remnants of an earlier distribution are essentially "fossilized in place". We have successively "unfolded the present pattern of languages as given by Greenberg with a series of maps to the point where the remaining groups do not overlap or intrude upon each other. This procedure results in two such "earliest" groups — Andean and Macro-Panoan which extend from the northwest toward the south. Following this the Macro-Tucanoan expanded from the upper Amazon Basin to the Atlantic with some small extensions into the Andean and Macro-Panoan areas. These three groups appear to constitute the earliest occupation of the majority of the country in three almost independent movements. This pattern was then significantly disrupted by the southward expansion of a combined Chibchan-Paezan group which probably moved south from the region of the isthmus of Panama in two narrow migrations - down the west coast and also very deeply south through the center of the country. This was then followed by a broad expansion of Macro-Carib, probably from the central part of the northern coast, to the west and south. This disrupted the Chibchan-Paezan and further disrupted the already fragmented Macro-Tucanoan peoples. A subsequent expansion of the Equatorial peoples - probably from the general coastal region of southern Brazil - overwhelmed the southern Macro-Carib peoples and further fragmented each of the other four groups to varying degrees. The final expansion was of the Macro-Ge speaking peoples, probably from the southern part of Brazil, into the southern portion of the Equatorial region. Thus seven migrations are indicated from this unfolding .

A major implication of the analysis is that these "seven migrations" may be considered as three groups not as seven independent events.

The first group consists of Andean, Macro-Panoan, and Macro-Tucanoan since all three have a common area of linkage in the north of the Andes (Map 2). Thus it seems reasonable that all three could have resulted from a single migration into South America that later split into three and the single migration originated to the north. The second group consists of Chibchan-Paezan and Macro-Carib. Both are consistent with an origin in one area of the north coast and subsequent movements to the south. This pair could also represent a single entry from the north and a subsequent split. The third group consists of Equatorial and Macro-Ge that appear to have originated entirely within South America, probably in the southeast.

If this thesis is correct then it is possible that the first two groups of migrations represent two migrations from North America.

A map of the location of the several language groups in South America shows a very complex pattern where eight major language groups are found in about 100 large and small regions scattered over most of the continent. In addition a single small Hokan group is found on

the northwest coast, but because it is so limited, it need not be discussed here. This complex pattern is very well illustrated in the map given by Joseph H.Greenberg In his "Language in the Americas" and we have chosen to examine the possible migration of peoples in South America based upon this map; we shall comment upon this source later. There may be other such maps of language groups which might serve equally as well but we are unaware of them, and the detail shown in Greenberg’s map very well suits our needs. For example, he shows even very small regions of various groups, not just the major locations. One practical difficulty in the use of this map that it is illustrated in black and white, and that it is difficult to see the extent of each separate group and so identify many significant details. Thus we found it essential to produce a colored version which makes the distributions much more apparent to the human eye.

With such an aid some distinctive patterns are readily apparent. Perhaps most striking is the series of Andean speaking regions extending all the way down the west coast from Ecuador to Chile and southern Argentina. The continuity of this distribution is broken by intervening regions of some other groups as well as fairly extensive regions where the languages are either unclassified or unknown, but it is difficult to avoid the perception that the Andean languages once occupied the entire coastal region. A similar pattern is shown by Macro-Panoan which lies in three major areas extending from northern Bolivia to Uruguay with relatively small intervening regions of other groups. As with Andean, it is difficult to see that the Macro-Panoan speaking peoples did not once occupy a single region which extended from Bolivia to Uruguay.

We have unfolded the modern pattern of language groups as shown in Greenberg’s map by first drawing an envelope around all members of a given group on the assumption that this represents a probable (minimum) region previously occupied by that group. That is, we have assumed that the remnants of earlier distributions are "fossilized in place". We then examined this pattern in detail, observing such features as the enclosure of an "island" of one group surrounded by a "sea" of another group and thus where the latter group has apparently penetrated a region which was earlier occupied by the former group. Another pattern which is also suggestive of such penetrations is where one group lies between significant regions occupied by another. Following this procedure we have derived a series of language distributions which show plausible earlier and later configurations which indicate a series of successive migrations, of languages and probably of people. Such "unfolding" must end when there is no indication of one language group disrupting or replacing another.

This successive unfolding leads ultimately to two or three "earliest" groups which do not overlap each other or interpenetrate to a limited extent - Andean, Macro-Panoan, and Macro-Tucanoan. Following this is a series of apparent "expansions" which are disruptive of the earliest pattern and of each other to varying degrees. The first is of a narrowly directed Chibchan-Paezan group (which we have combined here) which extends from the north to the extreme south. The next is an apparently southward movement of the Macro-Carib peoples which principally disrupted the prior Chibchan-Paezan group and the Macro-Tucanoan. The next was a vast expansion of the Equatorial group which seems to have "washed around" and through every one of the other groups and which thus extends over the largest part of the continent. The final expansion was of the Macro-Ge group which differs from the others in that it appears to have arisen and remained within the Equatorial group, disrupting it but none of the others.

These results are presented in a series of maps which we will discuss separately. For simplicity, we begin with the "earliest" patterns and successively add each of the expansions we believe have occurred.

We believe that it is plausible that people expanded into any adjacent, unoccupied land where their means of subsistence would allow them to live; this could mean that their existing physical equipment and way of life did not require any modifications or that changes were required. Either way, the virgin areas are likely, at least initially, to have removed or reduced restrictions on family growth due to limited food supplies and created a population increase which would encourage further expansion.

This situation may well have applied to the first three groups that we have identified as "earliest" since they show little or no interference with each other, -the Andean, Macro-Panoan, and Macro-Tucanoan. The first two present a slightly different picture from the last and we illustrate them separately.

These two groups are the only ones which show no interference with each other or with other language groups and plausibly could represent the first (identifiable) occupation of South America.

In particular, the Andean group occupies most of the western coastline which is surely the region most likely to have been entered by people who (as has been proposed by many) may have followed the west coast all the way from the Bering Strait. Although coastal resources would not be unchanged in such a southward migration, there would be a generally similar environment and adaptations in equipment and way of life would not be excessive if the expansion was gradual. In Map I we have outlined and shaded the region which was, at one time, probably occupied by the Andean peoples; the delineation of the northern region is reasonable since there are a number of Andean regions there, but the limits of the southern region are obviously quite uncertain.

The Macro-Panoan territory is clearly not coastal since it is separated from it by the massive mountain range of the Andes. Assuming that immigration came from the north this group appears to have originated in the extreme north of Peru and the adjacent region of Brazil. It is probably very significant that this region is inland from the only location between Colombia and central Chile where the massive barrier of the Andes is broken by a lower saddle of mountains. This would indicate that the forerunners of the Macro-Panoans could well have come through this saddle from the coast into the inner region of the continent. If this is so then they could originally have been coastal people, perhaps even part of the "Andean" expansion down the western coast. Presumably they then would have required some - unknown - time to adapt to the inland environment and expand toward the southeast. Thus the Macro-Panoan expansion is probably later than the Andean, though we have no means of judging what length of time this actually means.

We have outlined and shaded a wide band which the Macro-Panoan peoples may have once occupied. In a broad sense this delineation is reasonable but in particular we could plausibly have expanded the area in the south to have included much of the coastal area to the north and the south of the shaded area since there seems to be no reason why the area they occupied would be limited to that shown.

The present Macro-Tucanoan peoples are found in widely separated areas at the headwaters of the Amazon Basin and near the Atlantic coast. We have connected and shaded the area that they might have once occupied. But, apart from this broad distribution, we also take note of three westward "intrusions" which we think are significant. The northernmost of these is determined by one small Macro-Tucanoan region between the Andean and Macro-Panoan groups. The other two project into the general area of the Macro-Panoan but cause some "necking" of the area but do not sever one from another. We see these intrusions as evidence that the Macro-Tucanoan expansion was later than the Andean and Macro-Panoan, and this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis when we consider that the adaptations needed to occupy the Amazon basin were probably considerable.

The assumption that the Macro-Tucanoan expansion proceeded from west to east is reasonable since all peoples presumably entered South America through the Isthmus of Panama. So this people had their genesis in the same general region as the Macro-Panoan, that is, northern Peru and the adjacent lands of the Amazon. We can therefore assume that this people too were descended from coastal dwellers who moved through the lower part of the Andes as did the Macro-Panoan. However the Amazon Basin surely presented an even more challenging environment than the lands to the southeast and the development of appropriate tools such as boats must surely have taken longer so that the Macro-Tucanoan would be delayed.

The presence of this third group meant that the larger part of South America was now inhabited, and all by peoples who had come from the northern part of the western coast. But we should note that there is no indication that there were people in the land bordering the northern coast or in the vast lands of southern Brazil. We shall return to this point later.

We consider the Chibchan and Paezan people as one group and now turn to the evidence for their remarkable apparent movement from the region of the Isthmus of Panama to the southernmost part of South America.

There seems to be little doubt that this group of people came from the extreme northwest since they are not only strongly concentrated there but regions occupied by them are found in the Isthmus itself, in Mexico, and even in Florida. And so they probably represent an infusion which was not related to the previous three groups who all descended from people entering along the western coast.

One direction of their movement was southward along the west coast, quite possibly displacing or over running Andean peoples and, in the southern part isolating one Andean region from the rest. They also penetrated along the northern coast, occupying a region which, as far as we can tell, was not inhabited. But, from this northern coastal region they apparently moved due south in a fairly narrow band until they reached the Pacific Coast in the region of modern Chile.

Why they should do this is a mystery since they were not entering uninhabited lands and had to break through not just one but three different groups of people, all occupying different types of country. And why did they not spread out to east or west and keep pressing south? Yet that they did so seems to be the only reasonable conclusion since they left a number of still-existing Chibchan-Paezan regions in their wake. They must have had sufficient population and strength to thrust the other peoples aside, but even if there were, for example, strong population pressures, this in itself would not induce such a directed migration.

We now turn to the fifth movement – that of the Macro-Carib peoples - which disrupted the previous Chibchan-Paezan expansion in the north as well as the thrust to the south and further isolated the eastern regions of the MacroTucanoan from the western areas.

The present major areas occupied by this group are in the north and it seems reasonable that this might have been where they originated. They then would have moved west and south as we indicate in the map. Intriguingly, this is a region which we have not previously identified with any language group, but clearly, if they came from this area, it must have been inhabited. It is possible that this northern coastal area was actually occupied by Macro-Tucanoan peoples which left no residual areas where their languages were spoken. And perhaps their expansion was stimulated by the intrusion of the Chibchan-Paezan peoples into this area. These speculations are not unreasonable from our limited perspective but we can offer no clear support for them.

We now turn to the Equatorial group that is by far the most widespread of all. Its pattern is quite different from the others we have discussed and gives the impression of a vast flood which extended over most of the northern three-fourths of the country. This disrupted and displaced all of the other groups and left a large number of isolated "islands" of other groups in its wake, and it penetrated but did not entirely overwhelm the Chibchan-Paezan and Andean groups since we see small "islands" of Equatorial inside some of these regions.

The question of its origin is one that we cannot address with great confidence but examination of Map 4 shows that we have not assigned another language group to a large region in the southeast of Brazil. This seems as likely a region as any other, and, since it must have been populated if it was the source, this was presumably by peoples of the Macro-Tucanoan or the Macro-Panoan groups (see Map 2). Since the former are linked to the distinctive Amazonian ecology we incline to the opinion that the Macro-Panoan peoples were the forerunners of the Equatorial peoples.

The distribution of the last group, Macro-Ge, is different from the others since it is essentially confined within the Equatorial group. It contains many islands of Equatorial speakers, but simply abuts a few regions of Macro-Carib and Macro-Tucanoan without surrounding them. Perhaps it originated from within the Equatorial peoples or possibly from an enclave of their speculative forerunners, the Macro-Panoan.

We believe that the essential correctness of our analysis is well demonstrated by the fact that the complex pattern of language distributions in South America can be reproduced by a small, plausible, series of movements of peoples. If the basic assumptions and our unfolding were severely in error it is surely would show itself, but nothing of this kind is apparent. While the simplicity of our analysis is probably its most convincing feature this clearly does not mean that these few large-scale movements are all that is needed to understand the pattern of languages in South America. They appear to provide the basic underlying pattern, but significant "local" movements of people must surely have also occurred.

This analysis is only feasible because of the fact that the boundaries of earlier, large, expansions of peoples is apparently largely preserved in sometimes isolated, often small, regions. In our phrase, fragments of the previous structures are essentially "fossilized in place". This is truly remarkable, but no more so, for example, than postulating that small groups of people migrated very long distances through regions occupied by other language groups. And we should note that we cannot assume that some remoter regions did not survive to be "fossilized".

And our analysis presents some unanswered questions. One such is the reality of the strikingly narrow Chibchan-Paezan migration to the south through the center of the continent. This seems to be difficult to understand as due to population pressure or improved mastery of food gathering techniques, and, since it is a question of what motivated peoples in the past it is probably unanswerable by us now. Other questions are those of the origins of the Macro-Carib and Equatorial peoples; did they arise where we have postulated, and from earlier groups?

Some of these questions can be addressed by linguistic analysis since our work implies a set of linguistic relationships. This we illustrate roughly below; the earlier groups are listed first and possible relationships are implied by presence in a column. The Chibchan-Paezan stands alone, and Andean may be a forerunner of both Macro-Panoan and Macro-Tucanoan.

Since we imply a time-sequence in this chart we would like to note that we have no guidance on the actual times involved. The individual expansions may perhaps have taken only hundreds of years, but the interval between one expansion and the next could be several thousands rather than hundreds of years. And is it conceivable that the Andean peoples are actually remnants of the first entrants into South America, tens of thousands of years ago?

Last, but by no means least, we believe that it is appropriate to comment on the validity of the source data, that is, Greenberg’s evaluation of language groups. The author is in no position to evaluate the linguistic arguments that led to Greenberg’s assessment, but it is clear that there are many linguists that disagree strongly with his views. Whatever the validity of these criticisms the author finds it very difficult to believe that a map which contains gross inaccuracies could be unfolded as we have done without showing numerous anomalies and contradictions. These are not apparent in our analysis and so our work is, in some sense, support for the overall validity of Greenberg’s analysis of South American languages. This comment clearly only applies to the South American languages, and not to other views that are presented on American languages as a whole.

We cannot close our discussion without pointing out an important implication of the pattern shown by the "seven migrations"; these may be considered as three groups not as seven independent events.

The first group consists of Andean, Macro-Panoan, and Macro-Tucanoan. As is well shown in Map 2 all three have a common area of linkage in the north of the Andes, and this is where a major saddle is found in the range. Thus it seems reasonable that all three could have resulted from a single migration into South America that split into three after entry into this region; and the single migration originated to the north.

The second group consists of Chibchan-Paezan and Macro-Carib. Both are consistent with an origin in one area of the north coast and subsequent movements to the south. This pair could also represent a single entry from the north and a subsequent split.

The third group consists of Equatorial and Macro-Ge that appear to have originated entirely within South America, probably in the southeast.

If this thesis is correct then it is possible that the first two groups of migrations represent two migrations from North America. These could have originated from peoples already in North America but could also represent two migrations that came from outside the Americas and passed through to South America. Further analysis is needed to show if there are significant links in North America and the Old World.

Greenberg, Joseph H., "Language in the Americas", Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1987.