Papers by Linda Gilaizeau
Nature, 2021
The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages—that is, Japanese, Korean, ... more The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages—that is, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic—is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history1,2,3. A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements4,5. Here we address this question by ‘triangulating’ genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including a comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary; an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic–Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia; and a collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional ‘pastoralist hypothesis’6,7,8, we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia from the Early Neolithic onwards, but that this shared heritage has been masked by extensive cultural interaction since the Bronze Age. As well as marking considerable progress in the three individual disciplines, by combining their converging evidence we show that the early spread of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture.
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by Mark Hudson, Martine Robbeets, Takamune Kawashima, Junzo Uchiyama, İlya Gruntov, Ilona R Bausch, Linda Gilaizeau, Olga Mazo, Alexander Savelyev, Sofia Oskolskaya, Matthew Conte, Joanna Dolińska, Noriko Seguchi, Geonyoung Kim, John Bentley, and Takehiro Sato Nature, 2021
Recent breakthroughs in ancient DNA sequencing have made us rethink the connections between human... more Recent breakthroughs in ancient DNA sequencing have made us rethink the connections between human, linguistic and cultural expansions across Eurasia. Compared to western Eurasia 9-11 , however, eastern Eurasia remains poorly understood. Northeast Asia-the vast region encompassing Inner Mongolia, the Yellow, Liao and Amur River basins, the Russian Far East, the Korean peninsula and the Japanese Islandsremains especially under-represented in the recent literature. With a few exceptions that are heavily focused on genetics 12-14 or limited to reviewing existing datasets 4 , truly interdisciplinary approaches to Northeast Asia are scarce. The linguistic relatedness of the Transeurasian languages-also known as 'Altaic'-is among the most disputed issues in linguistic prehistory. Transeurasian denotes a large group of geographically adjacent languages stretching across Europe and northern Asia, and includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic (Fig. 1a). The question of whether
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Journal of World Prehistory, 2021
From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500... more From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500-2700 BC. While the expansion of agricultural societies across the Sea of Japan did not occur until around 900 BC, the intervening period saw major transformations in the Japanese archipelago. The cultural florescence of Middle Jōmon central Honshu underwent a collapse and reorganisation into more decentralised settlements. Mobility increased as Late Jōmon influences spread from eastern into western Japan, and populations expanded to offshore islands such as Okinawa and the Kurils. In Kyushu and other parts of western Japan, the eastern Jōmon expansion was associated with the cultivation of adzuki and soybeans but, contrary to earlier assessments, there is no evidence for the introduction of cereal crops at this time. Here, we analyse archaeological and historical linguistic evidence of connections between the Eurasian mainland and the Japanese Islands c. 3500 to 900 BC. A re-evaluation of archaeological material discussed since the 1920s concludes that the transformations in Jōmon society during this period were at least in part a response to contacts with Eurasian Bronze Age cultures. Evidence for linguistic contact between Koreanic and the Ainuic languages which are presumed to have been spoken by Jōmon populations is also consistent with new Bronze Age mobilities. Although prehistoric Japan was one of the most isolated regions of Eurasia, we conclude that the historical evolution of societies in the Japanese archipelago after the third millennium BC was linked with processes of Bronze Age globalisation.
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Journal of World Prehistory, 2021
From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500... more From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500-2700 BC. While the expansion of agricultural societies across the Sea of Japan did not occur until around 900 BC, the intervening period saw major transformations in the Japanese archipelago. The cultural florescence of Middle Jōmon central Honshu underwent a collapse and reorganisation into more decentralised settlements. Mobility increased as Late Jōmon influences spread from eastern into western Japan, and populations expanded to offshore islands such as Okinawa and the Kurils. In Kyushu and other parts of western Japan, the eastern Jōmon expansion was associated with the cultivation of adzuki and soybeans but, contrary to earlier assessments, there is no evidence for the introduction of cereal crops at this time. Here, we analyse archaeological and historical linguistic evidence of connections between the Eurasian mainland and the Japanese Islands c. 3500 to 900 BC. A re-evaluation of archaeological material discussed since the 1920s concludes that the transformations in Jōmon society during this period were at least in part a response to contacts with Eurasian Bronze Age cultures. Evidence for linguistic contact between Koreanic and the Ainuic languages which are presumed to have been spoken by Jōmon populations is also consistent with new Bronze Age mobilities. Although prehistoric Japan was one of the most isolated regions of Eurasia, we conclude that the historical evolution of societies in the Japanese archipelago after the third millennium BC was linked with processes of Bronze Age globalisation.
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Cambridge World History of Violence, Vol. 1, 2020
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The Chinese bronze mirrors played an important role for the japanese elites of the Yayoi period (... more The Chinese bronze mirrors played an important role for the japanese elites of the Yayoi period (7th c. BC-AD 1st c.) in the north of Kyushu island: they were attributed by the Chinese power with other diplomatic gifts as a recognition of their vassalage. Sign of power, these precious mirrors were buried with their owner in rich tombs until the area and its chiefs collapsed during the 1st century. But in the 2nd half of the 3rd century, big tumulus tombs called kofun, appear in the Yamato plain (Nara prefecture) and they contain a new type of mirror, the sankakubuchishinju-kyo. Far more numerous than the mirrors known during the Yayoi period, the sankakubuchishinju-kyo of the Kofun period have a special feature: concentrated in afew big kofun of the Yamato, some of them belonging to the same mould have been found in more little kofun through the whole Japanese archipelago. Scholars think that these mirrors were used as diplomatic gifts for the rising power of Yamatai to local chiefs of less importance owing them "alleagence", as Chinese did during the Yayoi period towards their Japanese "barbarian" neighbours. Symbols of a support to the rising power that would become the first Japanese empire, the distribution of the sankakubuchishinjii mirrors shows the existing political and cultural links between some areas of the Japanese archipelago and shows the progression of the Yamato's centralizing domination of which some areas seem still excluded at this time. .
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Papers by Linda Gilaizeau