About the Transeurasian language family (Altaic) and the Northeast Asian agricultural community.

The Transeurasian language family is a theorized language family including two branches. The first branch is Altaic, consisting of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic, and the other branch is Japano-Koreanic. The proposed homeland is in Northeast Asia, in Manchuria.

The label ‘Transeurasian’ was coined by Johanson and Robbeets (2010: 1–2) with reference to a large group of geographicallyadjacent languages, traditionally known as ‘Altaic’, that share a significantnumber of linguistic properties and include up to five different linguisticfamilies: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic.

This is copied out of the published studies which reviewed Transeurasian languages:

In addition to the availability of agricultural vocabulary, Robbeets (2017, 2020a) used the linguistic dating and the location of the ancestral nodes in the Transeurasian family to associate ancestral languages with archaeological cultures. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis infers the time depths of separation at 4700 BCE for proto-Transeurasian, 3293 BCE for proto-Altaic, 1552 BCE for proto-Turko-Mongolic and 1850 BCE for proto-Japano-Koreanic (Robbeets and Bouckaert 2018). Different methods for the determination of linguistic homelands converge on situating proto-Transeurasian, proto-Altaic and proto-Turko-Mongolic in the West Liao River region, proto-Tungusic in the southern part of the Primorye region of the Russian Far East and proto-Japano-Koreanic on the Liaodong Peninsula before the individual Transeurasian languages reached their present-day locations. The connections in space, time and subsistence mode suggest an association between language families and archaeological cultures.

This association between ancestral languages and archaeological cultures leads to at least three predictions. First, since the speakers of proto-Transeurasian used vocabulary for weaving and spinning, we infer that they were familiar with these techniques. This gives rise to the expectation to find evidence for weaving and spinning in the Xinglongwa (6200–5400 BC) and Zhaobaogou (5400–4500 BC) cultures in the West Liao River region, such as loom weights and spindle whorls.

Second, since Transeurasian textile vocabulary solidly survived in the Japano-Koreanic and Tungusic subgroups, we infer that the speakers of Transeurasian took their knowledge of spinning and weaving with them on their journey to the southern part of the Primorye and the Liaodong Peninsula and from there over the Korean Peninsula to Japan. We therefore predict a connection between Neolithic spindle whorls in the Liao River Basin and those of the Neolithic on the Liaodong Peninsula, the southern part of the Primorye region and the Korean Peninsula as well as Bronze Age Japan.

Third, since the ancestral Transeurasian proto-languages display cognate textile vocabulary in addition to agricultural vocabulary, we infer that words for textile and agriculture were spread simultaneously by the early speakers. We predict that Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures with evidence for spindle whorls will tend to preserve evidence for agriculture and that we cannot find spindle whorls preceding agriculture in North and East Asia.

As far as Transeurasian prehistory is concerned, we traced population movements in North and East Asia through the linguistics and archaeology of textile production. We found that the area West of the Liao River in Northeast China was a Neolithic center of diffusion, not only of millet agriculture, but also of words and tools for spinning and weaving. As such, we provided additional support for the Language/Farming Dispersal Hypothesis of the Transeurasian languages.

The Transeurasian homeland is near the Liao river system and is linked to the Xinglongwa culture, a neolithic culture in Manchuria. Regardless if the included language are really related or not, they must have been spoken in this or a close geographic region.

More evidence for the Transeurasian community was presented by Nelson et al. 2020 and Li et al. 2020.

A study published in February 2020 in the Evolutionary Human Sciences supports the coherence of the Transeurasian (Altaic) familly through archaeolinguistic evidences, it posits that the sophisticated textile technology and millet farming expansion from Northeast China in East Asia can be linked with the Transeurasian languages expansion. The researchers were also able to reconstruct a textile vocabulary for the proto-Transeurasian language.

Most recently, Hudson et al. 2020 concluded that the linguistic, genetic and archeologic evidence is strongly supporting a “Transeurasian community” descending from autochthonus Northeast Asians (ANA or NEA) which later expanded massively all over Eurasia outgoing from Manchuria.

The Oroqen people were found to represent the “proto-Transeurasians” the best and are genetically nearly exclusively Northeast Asian.

The Oroqen people (simplified Chinese: 鄂伦春族; traditional Chinese: 鄂倫春族; pinyin: Èlúnchūn zú; Mongolian: Orčun; also spelt Orochen or Orochon) are one of the oldest ethnic groups in northeast China. The endonym oroqen means “people who keep reindeer, reindeer herder(s).” The ancestor of the Oroqen originally lived in the vast area south of the Outer Khingan Mountains and north of Heilongjiang. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China. As of the 2000 Census, 44.54% of the Oroqen lived in Inner Mongolia and 51.52% along the Heilongjiang River (Amur) in the province of Heilongjiang. The Oroqen Autonomous Banner is also located in Inner Mongolia.

Oroqen are associated with C-M217 and O1b2.

However there is critic concerning a Transeurasian origin of Japonic (and less of Koreanic):

Yurayong and Szeto (2020) discuss for Koreanic and Japonic the stages of convergence to the Altaic typological model and subsequent divergence from that model, which resulted in the present typological similarity between Koreanic and Japonic. They state that both are “still so different from the Core Altaic languages that we can even speak of an independent Japanese-Korean type of grammar. Given also that there is neither a strong proof of common Proto-Altaic lexical items nor solid regular sound correspondences but, rather, only lexical and structural borrowings between languages of the Altaic typology, our results indirectly speak in favour of a “Paleo-Asiatic” origin of the Japonic and Koreanic languages.”

Thus some (including Robbeets as early as in 2017) suggest that Japonic (and possibly also Koreanic) originated as a hybrid language. Robbeets proposed that the ancestral home of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was somewhere in northwestern Manchuria. A group of those proto-Altaic (“Transeurasian”) speakers would have migrated south into the modern Liaoning province, where they would have been mostly assimilated by an rice-agricultural community with an Austronesian-like language. The fusion of the two languages would have resulted in proto-Japanese and proto-Korean respectively depending on the intensity of “para-Austronesian” input.

Austronesians represented by the Dayak tribes which maintained the traditional Austronesian rice-agriculturalist culture:

Or Native Taiwanese:

There are also some similarities between Austronesian and the various Transeurasian languages in a more general way, which is one of the arguments for a far wider “Proto-Asian” phylum.

Conclusion:

The Transeurasian language family is a proposed language family or a areal family of Northeast Asia which expanded from Manchuria all over Eurasia. The languages may not all be related, however they share a common homeland and are associated with Northeast Asian ancestry.