Study considers linguistic diversity of California

(CN) — Whether for political, social, environmental reasons, or just on a whim, people have always moved around, intermingled, and shared their cultures with each other. A new study in Nature details how people some 5,200 years ago moved from modern Northern Mexico to what’s now Southern and Central California and how that left a lasting mark on language and history. 

People have lived in what’s now California for at least 13,000 years. Since that time, more languages have been spoken in the region than in Europe. Such languages include Yurok, spoken by the Yurok, or Oohl, people in Northwestern California, and Mojave, spoken by the Mojave, or Pipa Aha Macav, people on the Californian side of the Colorado River in the southeastern part of the state. 

In Southern California, languages from the Uto-Aztecan family, like Tongva, spoken by the Gabrielino-Tongva people in modern day Los Angeles, and Luiseño, spoken by the Luiseño people in Southern L.A. and Northern San Diego counties, predominated the region. Uto-Aztecan languages are also spoken throughout the western U.S., as far East as Texas and as far South as El Salvador.  

In an attempt to better understand how all these different languages developed so close to each other, and why Uto-Aztecan languages were so predominate in Southern California, archeologists and geneticists worked with Indigenous groups in California and Mexico to analyze the skeletal remains of 79 people, dating from 7,400 to 200 years before the present, because, as they write in the paper “language often correlates with movements of people.” 

The researchers found evidence that at least 5,200 years ago people from Northern Mexico, who share the same genetic lineages of modern people from the same area, began to migrate into Southern and Central California, possibly spreading Uto-Aztecan languages as they intermingled with the people living in the area. 

Previously, scientists and linguists thought that Uto-Aztecan languages spread into California through the spread of maize farming, but the earliest evidence of that practice in the Southwest is only 4,100 years ago, meaning the Uto-Aztecan languages and the migration of people could be unrelated.

“These languages are still being spoken today,” said Nathan Nakatsuka, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University's Reich Lab and the lead author of the study.

Jakob Sedig, the ethics and outreach officer for Reich Lab, who is also a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and a co-author of the study, called the results of the study “eye opening.”

Both Sedig and study lead author Nathan Nakatsuka, also postdoctoral researcher at Harvard’s Reich Lab, emphasized the importance of their partnership and collaboration with Indigenous communities like the Chumash, Tongva, and Ohlone. They explained how they shared data with the communities and asked them what kind of questions they wanted answered based on the research. 

One of those questions was about the genetic connection between people living in the Northern Channel Islands and the Santa Barbara coast from 7,400 years ago and modern Chumash groups. 

Sedig and Nakatuska’s analysis showed that they do share a genetic connection, which also supports a theory that “people speaking languages from an earlier linguistic substrate were once dispersed across large parts of California, and that the populations of the region were later transformed by new migrants who changed both the genetic and linguistic landscapes.”

“We’ve really been striving over the last few years to incorporate indigenous perspectives into our work,” Sedig said, adding that it adds “richness to our work."

“We also emphasized that genetic ancestry is distinct from identity, which is often based on social relationships rather than biological ties; genetic findings should never be seen as challenging cultural identity,” the researchers said in the study.

By including that statement, the researchers wanted to make it clear that their genetic findings didn’t go against the way people think about themselves or see themselves culturally, Sedig said. 

“We know now that biology is fluid, just like culture and language. Equating a person’s phenotype or their genotype with their specific cultural practice is something that doesn't always equate,” he said.  

“We don’t want this study to invalidate traditional narratives,” Nakatuska said, adding that genetics shouldn’t be the only thing that defines identities as there’s a social component, too. 

“I think it's important for the groups to define their identities themselves,” Nakatuska said.

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