Language Spread Rates and Prehistoric American Migration Rates

Author(s): Johanna Nichols
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 49, No. 6 (December 2008), pp. 1109-1117
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
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Language Spread Rates and Prehistoric
American Migration Rates
Johanna Nichols
Slavic Department 2979, 6303 Dwinelle, University of
California, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.
(johanna@berkeley.edu). 22 V 08
CA⫹ Online-Only Material: Supplements A–C
Spread rates for language families can be calculated from the
family’s range (which is generally known rather precisely) and
age (which is only rarely known precisely but can often be
estimated with useful accuracy). Spread rates are calculated
here for a number of different language families and subfam-
ilies in different cultural and economic contexts. Deliberate
long-distance migrations, imperial conquest, and transport
using wheels or sails make for very rapid spread rates. The
rate of prestate, pretransport spreads depends primarily on
ecology (latitude, coast vs. interior, mountains, vegetation,
climate); presence versus absence of food production and
movement into inhabited versus abandoned land have little
impact on spread rates. This fact makes rates of recent lan-
guage spreads applicable to early prehistory, where they can
be used to model prehistoric colonization rates. Average rates
for various ecologies are calculated for a spread from a North
American entry point to the archaeological site at Monte
Verde, Chile (14,500 calendar years ago). The time required
gives a latest possible date for the first settlement of the Amer-
icas. Entry dates postdating the end of glaciation all require
implausibly fast rates of spread.
It is not known how long it took early Americans to move
from Beringia to the Monte Verde, Chile, archaeological site
dated to about 14,500 years ago (Dillehay 1997; Dillehay et
al. 2008).1 That date plus the minimum required travel time
for pretransport hunter-gatherers to cross this distance will
give a latest possible entry date to North America for the
ancestors of the Monte Verdeans, and this will also be a latest
possible date for the first settlement of the Americas.
The Paleolithic archaeological record may never be so
densely surveyed and precisely dated as to permit close es-
timates of rates of prehistoric spread and migration. As a
workable alternative, rates can be estimated from language
spreads, which are not necessarily the same thing as demo-
graphic spreads or migrations but are often congruent with
them. Language spreads offer some practical advantages as
evidence. The geographical range of the spread is easily de-
termined: it is the limit of the range of the language or lan-
䉷 2008 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2008/4906-0007$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/
592436
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1109
guage family. Reliable information about ranges is now avail-
able for many languages and language families: see Goddard
(1996, 1999) for North America, Adelaar and Muysken (2004)
and Kaufman (1994) for South America, Evans (2003) for
northern Australia, various chapters by Pawley et al. (2005)
for New Guinea, and Moseley and Asher (1994) for other
areas. The starting date of a language spread is not directly
attested except in the few cases where we have historical re-
cords, but it can often be estimated from linguistic or joint
linguistic and archaeological evidence. The starting point
within a spread range can often be estimated by linguistic or
joint linguistic and archaeological means. Well-mapped and
at least approximately dated language families are relatively
numerous.
Language spreads are used here to estimate the shortest
possible time required for the journey to Monte Verde from
the entry point to North America and thus the latest plausible
entry date.2 The null hypothesis tested here is that the entry
date for the ancestral Monte Verdeans was not before about
15,000 years ago—the beginning of the end of the last gla-
ciation and just before the age of the earliest North American
genetic material from Paisley Caves in southern Oregon (Gil-
bert et al. 2008). The implication of the hypothesis is that an
entry around 15,000 years ago or later could have reached
Monte Verde by its time frame and hence that the settlement
of the Americas was entirely postglacial, consistent with the
absence of generally accepted archaeological dates earlier than
Monte Verde and Paisley Caves.3 Rapid spread rates reduce
the time required to reach Monte Verde and favor the hy-
pothesis. The argument here is that the fastest plausible spread
rates require glacial-era entry dates in order to bring the hu-
man frontier to Monte Verde in time, that is, that the null
hypothesis is falsified.4
1. Radiocarbon date of 12,500 years ago. Since language ages are re-
ported in calendar years, all dates here are given in calendar years (cited
directly from sources referred to or calibrated using Fairbanks 2005 and
rounded to 500).
2. Nonlinguistic considerations in spread rates include pathogens, par-
asites, and diseases, which probably would have slowed spread through
the tropics (Dillehay 1991) and necessitate more than a single entry
(Montenegro et al. 2006). Rates of initial spread into uninhabited land
cannot have been so rapid that frontier populations were both too small
to be viable and too distant to maintain contact with others. Anderson
and Gillam (2000) equate spread time to Monte Verde with the time
required to populate North and South America, which requires making
assumptions about population growth rates and population densities that
are more hypothetical than the linguistic estimates used here.
3. The genetic evidence from the Americas supports an earlier entry,
perhaps as early as 20,000 years ago (Schurr 2004).
4. Dates somewhat younger than that for Monte Verde, but still pre-
Clovis, have been reported for a range of locations and ecologies in South
America; for surveys, see Dillehay (1999, 2000, 2003), Goebel, Waters,
and O’Rourke (2008), and Gruhn (2004). These make it clear that the
Monte Verde date, though the earliest for South America, is not an outlier
(see also Waters and Stafford 2007).
 1110 Current Anthropology Volume 49, Number 6, December 2008

Table 1. Spread rates to Monte Verde at mean and high rates for coastal and near-coastal ecologies

Mean High Time

Distance Rate Time Rate (distance/rate)

Mid-latitude 5,600 0.35 16,000 2.67 2,097

Low latitude 8,000 0.24 33,333 0.67 11,940
Total 13,600 49,333 14,038
Start date (total time ⫹ 14,500) 63,833 28,538

Note. Mean rates are from tables A1 and A2 (CA⫹ online supplement A); high rate is highest in those tables. Start date is the
time (in years ago) at which the ancestral population would have had to start moving south from the Columbia River in order
to reach Monte Verde by 14,500 years ago.

Method and Definitions standard word list. Glottochronology uses binary comparisons
among the daughter languages and chooses the oldest figure
The geographical range of a language spread is the distance
(unless that is an egregious outlier) when different binary
from periphery to periphery, measured wherever the diameter
comparisons give different results. It relies on the comparative
is greatest. Discontinuous ranges are measured from outlier
method to determine cognacy and to work out subgrouping
to outlier, with the gaps in the range also counting as distance.
and thus ensure that the age of a given binary comparison is
The origin is the starting point within the range, and the
that of the entire family and not a subbranch. Glottochron-
radius is the distance from the origin to the farthest periphery.
ology may be described as raw if it applies the test and me-
The origin is not always known, but the range is known for
chanically chooses the oldest age (or if there are only two
any language or language family that has been identified and
daughter languages available, it uses the one age they yield),
mapped, and the range therefore has to serve as an estimate
as contextualized if it uses the comparative method to reject
of spread distance in many cases. In fact, a number of language
or adjust ages based on statistical or sociolinguistic outliers
spreads—and apparently the great majority of rapid spreads,
(avoiding, e.g., obviously archaic languages such as Icelandic
which are of chief interest here because rapid spreads favor
or innovative ones such as English in computing ages for
the null hypothesis—do seem to have originated near the
Germanic or Indo-European; avoiding known pidgins or cre-
peripheries of their ranges, which means that the range is a
oles in computing ages for the families they derive from; etc.),
plausible estimate of the spread distance at least for rapid
and as calibrated if it uses a method like that of Embleton
spreads. This appears to be because rapid spreads occur when
(1986, 1991) to compensate for likely undetected borrowings
a language enters a spread zone (Nichols 1992, 13 ff.), an area
between adjacent sister languages.5 Figures cited here are raw
in which repeated spreads occur and any language either
or lightly contextualized. Most dates for native American fam-
spreads widely or dies out from the area. A language in a
ilies are based on glottochronology (cited from Campbell
spread zone spreads out from the edge of the zone well into
1997).
or across the spread zone, so the point of origin is at the edge
The peak duration of a spread is the time frame—a subpart
of the language’s full spread.
of the family’s entire age—during which movement was fas-
The age of a linguistic spread is the time since dispersal of
test and most of the spread occurred. Peak durations have
the language or family whose range is at issue. Estimating the
been determined for only a few of the language spreads sur-
age almost always requires use of the standard historical-
veyed here. For example, the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan
comparative method, which linguists use to establish the re-
is about 2,000 years old on glottochronological and compar-
latedness and subgrouping of a family and to reconstruct parts
ative evidence, but the peak duration of its spread across the
of its vocabulary and grammar. Results of this analysis may
Great Basin began at most about 800 years ago on the evidence
be compared to archaeological information, as when the dis-
of divergence within subbranches of the family. The peak
persal of the Oceanic branch of Austronesian is identified
spread had reached its modern extent by at least about 1800
with the spread of the Lapita archaeological culture from
northern Melanesia about 4,000 years ago (Kirch 1997; Blust
5. Glottochronology is sometimes said to be rejected by many or most
1995; Pawley and Ross 1993). The comparative method itself
historical linguists (e.g., Campbell 1997, passim), though my impression
may be used to establish that the language family is com- is that opinions are more evenly split and that those who reject it do so
parable in divergence and depth, and therefore probably in because it is not precisely accurate (e.g., different pairs of daughter lan-
age, to reference families such as Romance, Germanic, Indo- guages in the same family return different ages) while those who accept
European, and so on. (The Romance family is the rare happy it assume variance and take glottochronological dates as approximate.
Glottochronology and similar comparison assumes cross-linguistic reg-
case where the family’s ancestor and its divergence are his-
ularity in cognate survival rates but does not require clocklike precision
torically attested and therefore firmly datable.) Another means in that regularity. In any case its validity is a matter of criteria, not votes.
of estimating ages is glottochronology, a survival analysis that See Holman et al. (2008), McMahon and McMahon (2005), Kessler
assumes a constant rate of cognate vocabulary loss from a (2001), and Embleton (1986) for the tractability of word lists.

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Table 2. Spread rates to Monte Verde at average and high rates for continental interiors
Distance
Mid-latitude 5,600
Low latitude 8,000
Total 13,600
Start date (total time ⫹ 14,500)
Note. Entries are from tables A3 and A4 (CA⫹ online supplement A). Start date is the time (in years ago) at which the ancestral
population would have had to start moving south from the Columbia River in order to reach Monte Verde by 14,500 years
ago.
CE, so the peak duration for the Numic spread is about 600
years. There are sharp language boundaries between inner and
peripheral languages within each of the three major Numic
subbranches, and these point to a two-stage spread history:
a first spread across the desert began in the south about 2,000
years ago with the initial divergence; a disruption or halt in
the vectors of language spread accompanied a severe drought
of ca. 900–1200 CE; and after the drought, language spread
resumed but was now bidirectional, moving from both north
and south. The bidirectional trajectory brought together the
by-now differentiated dialects that had begun to develop sep-
arately during the dry period. For this drought, see Stine
(1994). For the Numic spread, see various contributions in
Madsen and Rhode (1994). I give a general model of fallbacks
and recolonizations in work in progress. Babel et al. (forth-
coming) revise this view of isogloss formation.
Where information is available, it appears that a period of
peak spread is usually followed by a period of stasis in which
little or no spread occurs or, as in the Numic case, the tra-
jectory of spread is disrupted. Some such cases are reviewed
in CA⫹ online supplement A.
The rate of spread is distance (i.e., range or radius) divided
by age, expressed in kilometers per year. The peak rate is
range divided by peak duration. For instance, the Numic rate
is 1,360 km/2,000 years p 0.68 km/year; the peak rate is
1,200 km/600 years p 2.0 km/year.6
The mechanism of language spread is usually a combina-
tion of language shift (when a language is adopted by a pop-
ulation that formerly spoke a different language), migration
(when speakers of a language move into a new territory not
adjacent to the original one), and expansion (when the range
of a language expands into adjacent land). Though all three
mechanisms are usually involved, often one of them predom-
inates. Reliable reconstruction of the prehistoric sociolin-
guistics of a spread is difficult, however. Even in the much-
studied Numic case, there is debate as to whether it involved
demographic expansion (Bettinger and Baumhoff 1982) or
6. Rates are calculated to two decimal places for consistency, though
all should be taken as estimates with unknown ranges of error. Measured
distances are rounded, except that conversions of miles to kilometers are
left as calculated (e.g., 1,360 here).
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1111
Mean High Time
Rate Time Rate (distance/rate)
0.66 8,484 1.07 5,234
0.63 12,698 1.33 6,015
21,183 11,249
35,683 25,749
language shift (Hill 2001), and usually there is no way of
deciding which mechanism may have predominated.
Independent of their mechanism, language spreads can run
a geographical gamut from gradual (covering all ecologies)
to saltatory or patchwise (leaping from patch to patch of rich,
familiar, or available resources). The reasons for bypassing a
stretch of terrain might include unfamiliarity with its re-
sources, lack of technology to exploit them, competition, and
so on, but the resultant linguistic geography is similar: dis-
continuous ranges.7 In the calculation of spread rates, patch-
wise spread entails rapid spread because the measurement of
a range includes the gaps as well as the inhabited spaces.
The initial and early settlement of the Americas was of
course different in some respects from the spreads of the past
few thousand years, on which this article is modeled. The
first immigrants to the Americas were not food producers,
doubtless lacked complex social organization, and did not use
transport.8
Another important difference between ancient America and
recent language spreads is that there was a species frontier in
ancient America: the southernmost and easternmost bound-
aries of the range of the first entrants were also the boundaries
of the range of Homo sapiens in America. The frontier offered
societies within reach of it the possibility of expanding patch-
wise at existing levels of intensification and population den-
sity, while demographic expansion in an already inhabited
area is possible only by increasing intensification and density
and/or by succeeding in competition. Where possible, I have
drawn on examples of recolonization of deserts, where there
is also movement into uninhabited land. In any event, the
vast size and ecological diversity and richness of the Americas
probably mean that there was little difference between spreads
of the frontier period and early postfrontier spreads, as new
niches probably continued to be available long after the fron-
tier had reached Tierra del Fuego and the Atlantic coast.
7. Discontinuous ranges can also be due to the later spread of a dif-
ferent language family cutting into a once-continuous range.
8. People making coastal entries must have had watercraft in which
to make the Bering Strait crossing or to skirt the Cordilleran ice sheet,
but I assume that once south of the periglacial area, their descendants
used watercraft only for hunting, day-to-day transport, and the like but
not for rapid long-distance migrations.
 1112 Current Anthropology Volume 49, Number 6, December 2008

Table 3. Fastest spread rates

Years Kilometers Rate Factors Latitude Density Time (years) Start (years ago)

Lapita peak spread 200 4,000 20.00 T, B, F L L 680 15,180

Turkic peak spread 500 4,800 9.60 T, B, S, F M L 1,417 15,917
Comanche 200 1,920 9.60 T, B M L 1,417 15,917
Polynesian peak 700 6,400 9.14 T, B, F L L 1,488 15,988
Slavic peak 100 800 8.00 T, B, F M M 1,700 16,200
Hungarian peak 400 3,200 8.00 T, B, F M M 1,700 16,200
Inuit 1,000 6,400 6.40 T, B H L 2,125 16,625
Bantu N-S peak 1,000 4,000 4.00 F L L 3,400 17,900
Apachean (Canada to
Mexico) 600 1,920 3.20 B? H-M L 4,250 18,750
Pama-Nyungan N-S peak 1,000 3,200 3.20 M-L L 4,250 18,750
Mapudungun 600 1,600 2.67 F M L 5,100 18,600
Bantu E-W peak 1,000 2,500 2.50 F L L 5,440 18,940
Numic recolonization 600 1,200 2.00 B M L 6,800 21,300
Western Desert peak 1,000 1,600 1.60 L L 8,500 23,000
Athabaskan (Pacific) 2,500 3,840 1.54 M H 8,854 23,354
Quechuan 1,200 1,600 1.33 S, F L M 10,200 24,700
Slavic 1,500 1,600 1.07 T, F M M 12,750 27,250
Bantu E-W 3,000 3,200 1.07 F L L 12,750 27,250
Algic 5,000 5,280 1.06 (F) M L 12,879 27,379
Uto-Aztecan 5,000 4,960 0.99 (F) M ML 13,710 28,210
Cariban 3,700 3,200 0.86 F L H 15,725 30,225
Maipurean (Arawakan) 4,500 3,840 0.85 F L H 15,938 30,438
Aymaran 1,300 1,000 0.77 S, F L L 17,680 32,180
Pama-Nyungan E-W 5,000 3,840 0.77 L L 17,708 32,208
Finno-Ugric 4,000 2,900 0.73 MH L 18,759 33,259
Numic 2,000 1,360 0.68 M L 20,000 34,500
Yokutsan recolonization 600 400 0.67 B M H 20,400 34,900
Pama-Nyungan N-S 5,000 3,360 0.67 M-L L 20,238 34,738

Note. Factors: T p transport, B p beeline (migration or series of migrations to known destinations), S p state or empire, F p food production.
Parentheses indicate that a factor applies to only part of the family. L p low, M p medium, H p high. Density p density of language families
in the immediate vicinity. Time p years required to travel from the lower Columbia River to Monte Verde at this rate. Start p time at which the
ancestral population would have had to start moving south from the Columbia River in order to reach Monte Verde by 14,500 years ago.

The entry route to North America and the means of entry
are not known. The four best possibilities are a postglacial
coastal entry from Siberia via Chukotka or the Aleutian island
chain to western Alaska; glacial or late glacial coastal entry
via the Aleutian island chain, skirting the coastal ice sheet; a
late glacial coastal migration along southern Beringia; and a
glacial or late glacial overland entry from central Alaska via
the corridor between the Cordilleran and Laurentian ice
sheets. Since entry times and entry points are unknown, I
have made the model independent of the entry point by com-
puting the journey only from a starting point south of the
maximal ice sheets, at the lower Columbia River (about 46⬚N)
or at a similar latitude inland. Hence the entire journey from
this starting point to Monte Verde (about 41⬚S) is at mid-
and low latitudes.
There were almost certainly several separate linguistic en-
tries to North America (Nichols 2000),9 so that the expansion
9. Multiple linguistic entries do not in themselves contradict the evi-
dence of one or very few genetic populations ancestral to all native
Americans (Schroeder et al. 2007; Schurr 2004), as one genetic population
can subsume several different languages. More problematic for genetic
unity is the likely possibility that linguistic entries (totaling perhaps a
of the linguistic frontier from the Columbia to Monte Verde
probably involved at least some cases of later immigrants
leapfrogging over earlier ones. If so, descendants of the first
immigrant have not remained at the frontier the whole time,
and the linguistic population at the frontier has changed over
time. It is not known whether there was leapfrogging or dis-
placement after the first entry, so the analysis here can purport
to model only the movement of the frontier and not the
trajectory of any one language family.
Rates of Language Spread at Low and Mid-Latitudes
Coastal Spreads. Tables A1 and A2 (see supplement A) show
29 language spreads that occurred in coastal and near-coastal
ecologies, grouped by latitude. Coastal spreads are not rapid,
particularly those at low latitudes (mean 0.24 km/year, median
0.15 km/year).
The distance from just south of the ice sheets to Monte
Verde is about 13,600 km (as the crow flies along the coast
or in the intermontane area along the eastern lower slope of
dozen) continued for millennia, with clearly earlier and clearly later ones
(Nichols 2000; Nichols and Peterson 1996).

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 1113

Table 4. Slowest spread rates

Years Kilometers Rate Factors Latitude Density

Tangkic land range 2,000 400 0.20 L H

Yokutsan 2,000 400 0.20 M H
Salishan eastward 4,000 800 0.20 M H
Zapotecan 2,000 320 0.16 F L H
Gunwinyguan 4,000 600 0.15 L H
Wakashan N-S range 5,500 800 0.15 M H
Maiduana 2,000 280 0.14 M H
Chumashan 2,000 240 0.12 M H
Iwaidjan 2,000 240 0.12 L H
Mixtecan 2,000 240 0.12 F L H
Yolngu mainland range 2,000 240 0.12 L H
Otomanguean 6,400 720 0.11 F L H
Witotoan 5,400 600 0.11 F L H
Zaparoan 4,100 400 0.10 F L H
Eastern Miwokana 2,500 240 0.10 M M
Totonac 1,800 160 0.09 S, F L H
Yuki-Wappo 3,000 240 0.08 M H
Skou 2,000 150 0.08 F L H
East Caucasian 8,000 450 0.06 F M H
Palaihnihana 3,500 192 0.05 M M
Western Pomo 2,500 100 0.04 M H
Tequistlatecan 2,000 80 0.04 F L H

Note. Factors: S p state or empire, F p food production. L p low, M p medium, H p high. Density p density of language
families in the immediate vicinity.
a
Probably a retreat rather than a spread (see note to table A3). (Start times not shown; they range from more than 80,000 to more
than 350,000 years ago.)

the major coast range).10 Of this distance, about 5,600 km is
at mid-latitudes and about 8,000 km at low latitudes. Table
1 shows how long it would take to cover these distances at
average rates and highest rates for spreads at or near the coast.
At the fastest attested rates for the respective latitudes, the
spread would have taken more than 12,000 years, requiring
an entry more than 26,000 years ago. At average rates, the
journey would have taken nearly 50,000 years, requiring an
entry more than 60,000 years ago—a grossly implausible date
that would require colonization of the Americas earlier than
Australia–New Guinea was first settled and much earlier than
the oldest Siberian archaeological sites. Interior spreads (table
2; tables A3, A4 in supplement A) are considerably faster than
coastal spreads, but even so the journey requires a start date
more than 30,000 years ago for the average rate and more
than 20,000 years ago for the fastest rate.
Determiners of Spread Rates
have been the rapid bursts in a punctuated longer-term his-
tory. Sustained movement at these peak rates from the Co-
lumbia to Monte Verde is implausible. See CA⫹ online sup-
plement B for the frequency and duration of rapid bursts and
the histories of individual spreads.
Tables 3 and 4 contrast the fastest and slowest spreads of
those surveyed here.11,12 Interior spreads are considerably fas-
ter on average than coastal spreads (cf. tables 1, 2). Low and
mid-latitudes are about equally frequent in the two tables, as
is food production, so neither of these factors appears to have
much impact on spread rate on this measure (though latitude
is relevant for coastal spreads, with mid-latitude spreads being
faster than low-latitude ones; table 1). Recolonizations after
retractions of spread frontiers (in table 3, those of Numic,
Western Desert, and Yokutsan) are among the fastest spreads.
Transport and state or imperial organization greatly increase
spread rates. For nontransport, nonstate spreads, the single

The known or inferred mechanisms of language frontier
spreads, especially those most similar to colonizations of un-
inhabited land, have been geographically patchwise and tem-
porally episodic, with a mix of viable and nonviable forays.
In particular, all of the long-range, rapid spreads appear to
10. Crow’s-flight measurements are used because this is the same mea-
surement made for language-family ranges. The least cost routes com-
puted by Anderson and Gillam (2000) would add at least 2,000 km to
the total distance.
11. Twenty of each plus any additional languages tied for twentieth
place. For the full list of spreads surveyed, see CA⫹ online supplement
C.
12. For comparison, the spread rate for the advance of plant cultivation
from the Fertile Crescent to northwestern Europe is about 0.8 (from Tell
Abu Hureyra ∼10,500 years ago, when domesticated forms of both wheat
and barley are present, to northern Germany and Netherlands ∼6,500
years ago), 3,200 km/4,000 years. This rate is comparable to the low
periphery of the fast spreads (table 3). Fort, Pujol, and Cavalli-Sforza
(2004) calculate a demographic spread rate of the same 0.8 km/year for
the postglacial recolonization of Europe, based on archaeological data.

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 1114 Current Anthropology Volume 49, Number 6, December 2008

Table 5. Frequencies of language family densities for the volved migration, but these few examples for which migration
fastest and slowest spreads can be inferred did involve relatively high rates. (Many of the
known migrations have involved transport, which further
High Density Medium Density Low Density speeds up their rate.)
All in all, natural ecology and not cultural context is the
Fastest 14 2 4
Slowest 0 2 20 single best predictor of the rate of pretransport, prestate
spreads. To the extent that this is so, Holocene spread rates
Note. P ! 0.0001 (x2 test); P ! 0.0000 . . . (Fisher) for high density versus can be a good model for Pleistocene spread rates and spread
nonhigh density or nonlow density versus low density; P ! 0.0000 . . .
rates for absolute initial colonizations. On the same grounds,
(Fisher) for high/medium/low density.
language spreads provide a useful model for ethnic spreads.

most important factor determining spread rate appears to be Conclusions

the density and diversity of languages or language families in
Table 6 uses the two most applicable of the fast spread rates
the area: when density is high, spreads are slow; when density
at low and mid-latitudes to calculate the total time needed
is low, spreads are fast (table 5). Density of language families
for the spread to Monte Verde. Though they are the closest
or of languages has to do with economic and ecological con-
available matches, these are not ideal models for an initial
ditions that do or do not permit a speech community to be
colonization: the Western Desert spread moved through al-
autonomous on a small plot of land (Nichols 1992, 233–34;
ready inhabited territory, relied on established networks of
1997; Nettle 1999a). Thus, linguistic density, territorial size
communication (McConvell 1996, 137), and may have in-
(relative to population), and spread rate are three manifes-
volved some language shift; the Numic recolonization was a
tations of the same ecological and ultimately economic
reversal of spread trajectory in land that remained known and
factors.
probably used. These factors are likely to have expedited
There are two minimal pairs suggesting that shift-based
spreads. Both are peak rates that were sustained for distances
spreads are faster than migration-based spreads. The 3,200-
or times much less than those involved in the spread to Monte
km spread of eastern Pama-Nyungan from central Queens-
Verde. (See supplement B for spread and pause episodes.)
land to southernmost Australia took as little as 1,000 years
Thus, the rate itself may err on the fast side, and sustainability
and probably involved language shift (Evans and McConvell
of such a rate for the entire distance is quite implausible. The
1998), while the spread of Western Desert through the interior
start time for this long assisted sprint is more than 22,000
of Australia moved at half that rate of speed and involved
years ago.
expansion and/or migration with minimal shift (Evans and
Alternatively, since the spread of Pama-Nyungan languages
McConvell 1998; McConvell 1996). This is despite the fact
in the western part of the Australian desert (see supplement
that the Western Desert spread proceeded through desert and
B) was partly at low latitudes and partly at mid-latitudes, its
the eastern Pama-Nyungan one was through well-watered
rate can be applied to the entire route to Monte Verde: 13,600
near-coastal land, a factor that should favor faster spread for
km at 1.10 km/year p 12,396 years. This overall rate would
Western Desert. In Eurasia, the Hungarian spread (which in-
require an entry date of 26,896 years ago. Even if there were
volved migration and probably little or no shifting; Golden
no Monte Verde site, the other early dates in southern South
1990, 242–48) was slower than the Turkic one (which is likely
America (of around 13,000 years ago) would also necessitate
to have involved considerable shift; Nichols 1998, 235) despite
an entry date more than 20,000 years ago.
the fact that the Hungarian spread was as an ethnic minority
Thus, the null hypothesis is falsified, even assuming that
in a Turkic context.
the entire journey to Monte Verde occurred at a barely plau-
On the other hand, there is evidence that spreads involving
sible speed and that unrealistically constant high rate requires
migration are faster than those involving expansion. The best
an entry date several millennia before the end of glaciation.
evidence for this comes from Amazonian language families
The only spreads surveyed here that do not require a start of
with discontinuous distributions and several outliers (see sup-
18,000 years ago or earlier are those at the top of table 3, all
plement B). Their spreads are probably due at least in part
anachronistically involving transport and beeline migrations.
to migration, for two reasons. First, the typical economy
among these peoples is based on slash-and-burn agriculture
Table 6. Numic rate at mid-latitudes and Western Desert
(Migliazza 1985), so that the periodic moves of villages to
rate at low latitudes
new field sites could easily turn into migrations. Second, the
known historical or protohistorical moves of peoples in this
Rate Kilometers Time
region have often involved migrations caused by warfare.
These families have relatively fast spread rates, especially for Numic 2.00 5,600 2,800
low-latitude families. Similarly, the Apachean, Comanche, and Western Desert 1.60 8,000 5,000
Hungarian movements involved migration, and their rates Total time 7,800
Entry date (time ⫹ 14,500) 22,300
were high. It is not always known whether spreads have in-

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Furthermore, the calculation of fastest plausible rates in table
6 uses the faster rates attested in continental interior spreads.
Given the richer resources of coastal and near-coastal lands,
however, it is unlikely that the initial spread was exclusively
interior: an inland entry would soon have led to the Columbia
drainage, which could well have drawn immigrants to the
coast, and in any event the 5,000 km from southern Mexico
through Central America was coastal or near coastal. The least
cost routes of Anderson and Gillam (2000) include Caribbean
as well as Pacific coastal stretches. Monte Verde is itself near
coastal, and its cultural materials include several species of
seaweed (Dillehay et al. 2008), so the most parsimonious
assumption of its origin is a coastal spread at least in southern
South America.
Thus, on the linguistic evidence, the ancestors of the Monte
Verdeans had entered North America and were south of the
glacial limits well before the end of glaciation and in fact
during the very height of glaciation. This linguistic estimate
has been arrived at independently of archaeological and ge-
netic evidence, on the assumption that mutually supportive
evidence from different fields can be identified only if the
separate analyses are fully worked out on their own. (Ar-
chaeological evidence was used to set the benchmark dates,
figures in some language family ages, and informs the model
of punctuated spread [supplement B] but does not contribute
to the argument or interpretation.) It is consistent with other
linguistic evidence pointing to Pleistocene settlement of the
Americas: the large number of irreducible indigenous Amer-
ican language families vis-à-vis the time required for descen-
dants of an ancestor language to lose all trace of relatedness,
typical numbers of descendant families per ancestor language,
the structural diversity of those families, and the evidence that
there was a clearly later stratum of linguistic immigration to
western North America, which is itself of nearly late glacial
age (Nichols 1990, 1992, 2000; Nichols and Peterson 1996).13
The estimate is only as good as the language family ages it
is based on, and I hope it will spur more research on language
family dates. It can be falsified linguistically by showing that
language family dates are systematically much younger than
now believed (so that spreads are faster than calculated here).
It can be archaeologically falsified, or at least seriously weak-
ened, by showing that the first entrants to North America
13. Nettle (1999b) argues that language family diversity is greatest
shortly after colonization and decreases over time; hence Africa and Aus-
tralia, with relatively low density of language families, are longer inhabited
than North America, with relatively high density. Now, Africa and Aus-
tralia are short-coasted, flat, dry, and natural spread zones where repeated
extinctions of language families are to be expected, while New Guinea,
well-watered and topographically varied, has extremely high language
family density (Nichols 1992, 233; 1997, 368), though its settlement his-
tory is the same as that of Australia (the two were a single land mass
during glaciation). In fact, climate and geography suffice to predict pre-
state language family density and account for the large density discrepancy
between Australia and New Guinea, which Nettle’s model cannot do.
The Americas, large, varied, and ecologically rich especially in the west,
predictably accommodate considerable family diversity.
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1115
probably used long-distance sea voyaging along the coast or
by showing that ecological conditions on and near the Pacific
coast were unlike historical conditions in requiring long-dis-
tance migration and disfavoring linguistic diversity. Finally,
limits can be set on the entry date by improved understanding
of how the glacial maximum (about 22,000–18,000 years ago)
affected the possibilities of entry to North America. Clague,
Mathewes, and Ager (2004) find that inland movement from
Beringia to lower North America was totally blocked from
about 24,000 to about 15,000 years ago, and coastal access
was blocked for part of that time. If the maximum created a
barrier to entry, then any calculated spread rate that requires
an entry before 18,000 years actually requires one before the
maximum. The plausible spread rates for the entry of the
ancestral Monte Verdeans do in fact require entries during
the maximum.
Acknowledgments
This article was based in part on research supported by Na-
tional Science Foundation grant 92-22294. I thank four anon-
ymous reviewers for their comments. An earlier version of
the rate and time calculation, with a smaller language family
sample and some factual errors, was used in Nichols (2000).
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