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Review
. 2020 May 29:2:e19.
doi: 10.1017/ehs.2020.14. eCollection 2020.

Munda languages are father tongues, but Japanese and Korean are not

Gyaneshwer Chaubey  1 , George van Driem  2
Affiliations
Review

Munda languages are father tongues, but Japanese and Korean are not

Gyaneshwer Chaubey et al. Evol Hum Sci. .

Abstract

Over two decades ago, it was observed that the linguistic affinity of the language spoken by a particular population tended to correlate with the predominant paternal, i.e. Y-chromosomal, lineage found in that population. Such correlations were found to be ubiquitous but not universal, and the striking exceptions to such conspicuous patterns of correlation between linguistic and genetic phylogeography elicit particular interest and beg for clarification. Within the Austroasiatic language family, the Munda languages are a clear-cut case of father tongues, whereas Japanese and Korean are manifestly not. In this study, the cases of Munda and Japanese are juxtaposed. A holistic understanding of these contrasting cases of ethnolinguistic prehistory with respect to the father tongue correlation will first necessitate a brief exposition of the phylogeography of the Y chromosomal lineage O. Then triangulation discloses some contours and particulars of both long lost episodes of ethnolinguistic prehistory.

Keywords: Austroasiatic; Japanese; Munda; ethnolinguistic prehistory; population genetics.

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Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The enhanced 2012 Benares recension of Starosta's East Asian linguistic phylum (Starosta ; van Driem 2014).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
After the Last Glacial Maximum, the Y chromosomal haplogroup O (M175) split into the subclades O1 (F265, M1354) and O2 (M122).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Paternal lineages branching into new subclades. Each event involved a linguistic bottleneck leading to language families that today are reconstructible as distinct linguistic phyla. The O1 (F265, M1354) lineage gave rise to the O1a (M119) subclade, which moved eastward to the Fújiàn hill tracts and across the strait to Formosa, which so became the Urheimat of the Austronesians. Bearers of the O1b (M268) paternal lineage domesticated Asian rice. Bearers of O2a2a1a2 (M7) became the Proto-Hmong-Mien. In the Eastern Himalaya, the bearers of haplogroup O2a2b1 (M134) expanded and became the Trans-Himalayans. Haplogroup O1b1a1a (M95) is the Proto-Austroasiatic paternal lineage. The para-Austroasiatic fraternal clade O1b2 (M176) spread eastward, sowing seed along the way.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Two versions are depicted of the male-biased migration which introduced Austroasiatic language and four O1b1a1a1 (M95) paternal lineages to indigenous populations of the Choṭā Nāgpur, the overland trek from the Meghālaya originally proposed by Chaubey et al. (2011) and the Munda maritime migration proposed by Rau and Sidwell (2019).
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
In successive waves, the paternal lineages D1a2 (M55), C1a1 (M8), C2 (M217) and O1b2 (M176) migrated from the East Asian mainland to the Japanese archipelago at the dawn of the Palaeolithic, the Incipient Jōmon, the Early Jōmon and the Yayoi period respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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