Colibri: I just pulled out my copy of Genes, Peoples, and Languages (I always keep that handy), to see what ol’ Luigi has to say about the San. Interestingly, he has, in Figure 12 of that book, the San and Ethiopian lineages on an equal footing based on genetic data. By that I mean, both groups are shown to be equally “underived”. They’re also the least “derived” of any other group, both being only two branching points from the base-- the only groups with that few branching points. That’s pretty surprising…
Not sure I’m using the term “derived” correctly, but I think you get what I mean.
Yep, and I got flashbacks to it while writing. Wendell Wagner did the heavy lifting in that thread, but I posted some too, and it didn’t seem to have much effect. People don’t understand how a question can be meaningless, so you get the situation where folks go, “Ok, ok, the question makes no sense. But if it did, what would the answer be?” :smack:
Exactly!
I understand. There’s major geographical separation, and it’s not clear whether the languages are related or not - perhaps they’re both descendents from some old, Proto-World or at least Proto-Some-Unidentified-But-Large-Phylum that have coincidentally preserved on particular phonological feature. But there’s just not evidence; it’s just as likely, or moreso, that there’s an unknown history of areal contact due to migration, or just independent development of an innovative phonetic feature. The fact that clicks are rare doesn’t mean they can’t develop anew at all. I understand there’s an Australian Aboriginal language used for certain ceremonies that has clicks as well - not likely to be preserved from the same origins. Clicks have a peculiar mythic status among folks who don’t know much linguistics. But they’re not necessarily magical.
Well put, but I tried at least to address this idea earlier. The thing is, this makes them most likely far less like other human groups, doesn’t it? If they’ve been in an isolated population for that long, they’re probably much less similar, genetically, to each other racial group than the other racial groups are to one another.
All these questions depend on this sorta cultural myth of groups unchanged since the beginning of time, with pure morals and pure languages - in more religious times, they were thought to somehow retain some Edenic innocence that the civilized world had lost. Now it shows up more often in how eager people are to try any bizarre medicinal plant used by indigenous people somewhere, because they’re “more in touch with the earth” or something. It’s part of a larger cultural concept about “primitive” peoples that’s just not relevant to the real world.
Agreed. Whether the whole idea holds water would depend not on whether clicks per se are present in the language, but the degree in similarity in the suite of clicks used (presuming a variety are present). Also, if other linguistic elements were shared besides just clicks it would strengthen the hypothesis. If there were a number of independent resemblances it would make it more likely these were due to common descent rather than to convergence. Since I haven’t read the paper itself, I don’t know exactly what kind of linguistic evidence the authors presented.
Right. Just because a lineage has been isolated for a long time doesn’t mean it necessarily retains ancestral traits (although it may). To return to the example of the monotremes compared to other mammals, although they retain some very “primitive” (basal) traits, such as egg-laying and some skeletal elements, they are highly “advanced” (derived) in others, such as loss of teeth and other morphological changes. (On the other hand, some Insectivores, a relatively basal group among the placentals, probably physically resemble the common ancestor of the group).
Although the Khoisan may be a very ancient lineage, without further information it is impossible to say which of their physical or cultural traits are basal, and resemble the common ancestor of the Khoisan and other human populations, and which are derived, and thus unique to the Khoisan (or convergent to similar traits found in other human populations).
I confess to not having read that book (though I should), so I am not sure exactly how Cavalli-Sforza uses the terms.
I would just make two points. I presume that Cavalli-Sforza is looking mainly at “silent” mutations (whether to genes or to non-coding parts of the genome), that is, ones that do not have a major effect on morphological phenotype. Therefore, although these differences indicate how much time the Khoisan lineage has been separated, they give no information about how they might have changed morphologically during that time.
Second, he is probably using derived/underived in the cladistic sense, in that the only changes considered in the analysis are those that are those that are phylogenetically informative. These are those characters that are shared between some groups but not others. Any derived character unique to the Khoisan (or any other group) is not phylogenetically informative about their relationship to other groups, because it presumably arose after their separation from these other groups. Therefore, the Khoisan may in fact have many derived characters, but these are unique to them.