Jarosz Aleksandra, Robbeets Martine, Fernandes Ricardo, Takamiya Hiroto, Shinzato Akito, Nakamura Naoko, Shinoto Maria, Hudson Mark
Faculty of Humanities, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland.
Archaeolinguistics Research Group, Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
Evol Hum Sci. 2022 Jan 26;4:e4. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2022.1. eCollection 2022.
Hunter-gatherer occupations of small islands are rare in world prehistory and it is widely accepted that island settlement is facilitated by agriculture. The Ryukyu Islands contradict that understanding on two counts: not only did they have a long history of hunter-gatherer settlement, but they also have a very late date for the onset of agriculture, which only reached the archipelago between the eighth and thirteenth centuries AD. Here, we combine archaeology and linguistics to propose a tripartite model for the spread of agriculture and Ryukyuan languages to the Ryukyu Islands. Employing demographic growth, trade/piracy and the political influence of neighbouring states, this model provides a synthetic yet flexible understanding of farming/language dispersals in the Ryukyus within the complex historical background of medieval East Asia.
在世界史前史中，小岛屿上的狩猎采集者定居情况十分罕见，人们普遍认为农业促进了岛屿的定居。琉球群岛在两个方面与这种认知相悖：它们不仅有着悠久的狩猎采集者定居历史，而且农业出现的时间很晚，直到公元8世纪至13世纪之间才传入该群岛。在这里，我们将考古学和语言学结合起来，提出一个关于农业和琉球语传播到琉球群岛的三方模型。该模型利用人口增长、贸易/海盗活动以及邻国的政治影响，在中世纪东亚复杂的历史背景下，对琉球群岛的农业/语言传播提供了一种综合而灵活的理解。
