1. The social lives of isolates (and small language families)
- Author
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Van Gijn, Rik, Norder, Sietze, Arias, Leonardo, Emlen, Nicholas Q., Azevedo, Matheus C. B. C., Caine, Allison, Dunn, Saskia, Howard, Austin, Julmi, Nora, Krasnoukhova, Olga, Stoneking, Mark, Wiegertjes, Jurriaan, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive - UMR 5558 (LBBE), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), and Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement (VAS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Subjects
Biomaterials ,environmental science social history language isolates Northwest Amazon ,social history ,Northwest Amazon ,[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio] ,Biomedical Engineering ,Biophysics ,language isolates ,Bioengineering ,Biochemistry ,environmental science social history ,Biotechnology - Abstract
International audience; The Americas are home to patches of extraordinary linguistic (genealogical) diversity. These high-diversity areas are particularly unexpected given the recent population of the Americas. In this paper, we zoom in on one such area, the Northwest Amazon, and address the question of how the diversity in this area has persisted to the present. We contrast two hypotheses that claim opposite mechanisms for the maintenance of diversity: the isolation hypothesis suggests that isolation facilitates the preservation of diversity, while the integration hypothesis proposes that conscious identity preservation in combination with contact drives diversity maintenance. We test predictions for both hypotheses across four disciplines: biogeography, cultural anthropology, population genetics and linguistics. Our results show signs of both isolation and integration, but they mainly suggest considerable diversity in how groups of speakers have interacted with their surroundings.
- Published
- 2023
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