SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES

group of languages that once covered and today still partially cover all of South America, the Antilles, and Central America to the south of a line from the Gulf of Honduras to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Estimates of the number of speakers in that area in pre-Columbian times vary from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000. In the early 1980s there were approximately 15,900,000, more than three-fourths of them in the central Andean areas. Language lists include around 1,500 languages, and figures over 2,000 have been suggested. For the most part, the larger estimate refers to tribal units whose linguistic differentiation cannot be determined. Because of extinct tribes with unrecorded languages, the number of languages formerly spoken is impossible to assess. Only between 550 and 600 languages (about 120 now extinct) are attested by linguistic materials. Fragmentary knowledge hinders the distinction between language and dialect and thus renders the number of languages indeterminate. Because the South American Indians originally came from North America, the problem of their linguistic origin involves tracing genetic affiliations with North American groups. To date only Uru-Chipaya, a language in Bolivia, is surely relatable to a Macro-Mayan phylum of North and Meso-America. Hypotheses about the probable centre of dispersion of language groups within South America have been advanced for stocks like Arawakan and Tupian, based on the principle (considered questionable by some) that the area in which there is the greatest variety of dialects and languages was probably the centre from which the language groups dispersed at one time; but the regions in question seem to be refugee regions, to which certain speakers fled, rather than dispersion centres. South America is one of the most linguistically differentiated areas of the world. Various scholars hold the plausible view that all American Indian languages are ultimately related. The great diversification in South America, in comparison with the situation of North America, can be attributed to the greater period of time that has elapsed since the South American groups lost contact among themselves. The narrow bridge that allows access to South America (i.e., the Isthmus of Panama) acted as a filter so that many intermediate links disappeared and many groups entered the southern part of the continent already linguistically differentiated. Additional reading Cestmir Loukotka, Classification of South American Indian Languages (1968), contains a full list of languages, an extensive and detailed bibliography, the location and classification of languages, and a map. J.A. Mason, The Languages of South American Indians, in J.H. Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 6 (1950), pp. 157317, has an extensive bibliography, general information on language groups, a discussion of classifications, and a map. Additional informative works include N.A. McQuown, The Indigenous Languages of Latin America, Am. Anthrop., 57:501570 (1955), a critical appraisal of classifications with useful lists of languages and families, the location and classification of languages, and a map; C.F. and F.M. Voegelin, Languages of the World: Native America, Anthrop. Linguistics, vol. 6, no. 6, and vol. 7, no. 7 (196465), providing general information on American Indian languages, much information on groups and individual languages, and a discussion of classifications; Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 4, Ibero-American and Caribbean Linguistics, pt. 2, Linguistics of Non-Ibero-American Languages (1968), critical surveys of work done during the previous 20 years; Morris Swadesh, Afinidades de las lenguas amerindias, in Akten des 34. Internationalen Amerikanisten Kongress, pp. 729738 (1964); and J.H. Greenberg, The General Classification of Central and South American Languages, in Anthony F.C. Wallace (ed.), Men and Cultures (1959), two recent classifications of South American languages. Jorge A. Surez The people Distribution of aboriginal South American and circum-Caribbean cultural groups. In South America, native language families encompassed large blocks of territory and numerous societies. They cut across different cultural and social types and are found represented in different geographical and environmental surroundings. Languages may be grouped in many ways, but the major language groupings or families of South America may be conveniently divided into the Macro-Chibchan, Andean-Equatorial (including Tupian), Ge-Pano-Carib, and Hokan. This is the most simplified classification of South American Indian languages (see also South American Indian languages). In the 1500s, the central Andes, the area of greatest population density in South America (about 10 persons per square mile), was sparsely populated compared to centres of Old World civilization. Yet its population of approximately 3,500,000, crowded into narrow coastal valleys and small highland basins on approximately 1 percent of Peru's total land area, constituted a much higher density than could be found in any other part of South America. The chiefdoms of the northern Andes, northern Venezuela, and the Antilles had an estimated total population of 1,900,000, with densities ranging from 6.6 to 1.1 persons per square mile (2.5 to 0.4 persons per square kilometre). The southern Andes was inhabited by the Atacama, Diaguita, and Araucanians, whose combined population was possibly 1,131,000, with a density range of 0.38 to seven persons per square mile. Tropical-forest peoples numbered about 2,200,000 and had a density of 0.6 per square mile. Hunting and gathering peoples of the Chilean archipelago, Patagonia, the Gran Chaco, and eastern Brazilian uplands had a combined population of less than 800,000 and a density range of 0.2 (Chilean archipelago) to 1.1 (western Chaco). The population density of the central Andes was about 200 times greater than that of the hunters and gatherers, 20 times greater than that of the tropical-forest farmers, and 30 to 40 percent greater than that of the Araucanians and the chiefdoms of the northern Andes and the circum-Caribbean. The prehistoric period Human life-forms did not evolve in the New World, despite certain claims to the contrary which have never been taken seriously by most scholars. Migrants crossed from Siberia to Alaska, probably some 20,000 to 35,000 years ago (or perhaps earlier), when there was a land and ice bridge between the two continents. They seem to have remained locked in the northwestern sector of North America for eons, held back by impenetrable glacial formations. When the glacial cap retreated and valleys opened up, people (then existing as hunter-gatherers) began to follow the southward progression of game animals, fanning out across North America and down through Central America into South America, again a process occupying thousands of years. Archaeological discoveries have unearthed human skeletal remains in association with now-extinct species of animals and in geological deposits of the last phases of the Ice Age. Early man Archaeological evidence demonstrates that South America was occupied by early man at least 10,000 years ago, ample time for high civilizations to have evolved in the central Andes and for ecological adjustments to have been worked out elsewhere on the continent. Scientific dating techniques establish that agriculture was practiced along the Peruvian coast at least as early as 2300 BC. By 1000 BC agricultural societies flourished. This does not mean that all of South America had reached this stage of development nor that it was densely populated by farming communities. On the contrary, the continent was spottily inhabited by simply organized hunters and gatherers who then occupied the most favourable regions. As knowledge diffused from the central Andes to other parts of South America and as agriculture and other techniques were adopted by those peoples living in favourable environments, farming communities took form, and populations among them began to increase. Thus, on the foundation of early hunting and gathering societies, the more complex social and cultural systems gradually were built in those areas where agriculture developed; cultural growth and social complexity followed apace. Hunters and gatherers were pushed out of the farming regions to agriculturally marginal areas, where some of them are found today. The original migrants to the New World had no knowledge of the domestication of plants or animals, with the exception of dogs, which were used in hunting. Recent discoveries in Mexico indicate that agriculture was independently discovered in the New World in roughly the same era that it was established in the Middle East (about 70008000 BC) and that New World civilizations were built on an indigenous agricultural base. It is known archaeologically that cultural influences from Asia, as well as latter-day migrations of people such as the Eskimo, continued to impinge on parts of the New World over the millennia, but New World cultural developments that culminated in the formation of high civilizations in Mexico and Peru were overwhelmingly the product of native, independent invention in almost all spheres of cultural and social life. Sporadic influences probably reached Peru and the western parts of the tropical forests from across the Pacific Ocean, but their effect on the course of cultural development in this hemisphere was negligible. Native America constituted a separate cultural unit, comparable to that of the Old World.