Dispersal of Sino-Tibetan branches

Andrew Hsiu

Working hypothesis

Please cite as:

Hsiu, Andrew. 2019. Dispersal of Sino-Tibetan branches. Sino-Tibetan Branches Project (STBP) website. <https://sites.google.com/site/sinotibetanbranches/home/prehistory/dispersal>.

The Sino-Tibetan linguistic dispersal

1. The initial Proto-Sino-Tibetan dispersal (6,000-9,000 years B.P.) was from the Upper Yangtze region of Sichuan, Yunnan, and northernmost Myanmar. Sino-Tibetan would have originally spoken by hunter-gatherers culturally similar to the Trung people who wandered up and down the river valleys of the Upper Yangtze. Due to the rapidly warming climate of the early Holocene, hunter-gatherers were able to expand rapidly, with later generations independently adopting agricultural techniques from separate sources. The dispersal was "star-like," with Sino-Tibetan speakers migrating into the Three Gorges area (Tujia, etc.), Arunachal (Hrusish, Kho-Bwa, Idu-Taraon, etc.), and various other regions that are reachable by using the Yangtze River and its tributaries as a sort of "Neolithic subway metro."

2. Bottleneck migrations from the Upper Yangtze region into Northeast India occur during the Middle Neolithic and Late Neolithic, resulting in a Western Sino-Tibetan (WST) nucleus in the Eastern Himalayan foothills and the Assam plain. A secondary Sino-Tibetan expansion then occurs from this western nucleus, with branches such as Lepcha, Kiranti, Magaric, Newaric, Gongduk, West Himalayish, and others splitting off over time. Multiple streams of migrations from the Western Sino-Tibetan nucleus in Assam and Eastern Himalayan foothills travel along the east-west axis of the Himalayan foothills westward into Nepal. Hence, Sino-Tibetan languages in Nepal did not originate from a single source, but rather from already diversified languages originating from the east. This is why no "Proto-Himalayish" can be reconstructed, and neither can Proto-Western Sino-Tibetan.

3. Bottleneck migrations from the Upper Yangtze region onto the Tibetan Plateau occur during the Late Neolithic. An early Bodish linkage forms, with branches such as Basum, Tibetic, East Bodish, Kaike, and Tamangic splitting off over time.

4. With the arrival of agriculture from the Middle Yangtze region during the late Neolithic, agricultural techniques and sporadic loanwords from pre-Hmong-Mien flow into the Western Sino-Tibetan and Bodish regions. The Central Sino-Tibetan (CST) linkage, with its homeland in the Chindwin River Valley of northwestern Myanmar, starts to split off from Western Sino-Tibetan and moves southward into the Indo-Burmese borderlands (including the Naga Hills). Karbi, Meithei, Mru-Khongso, Pyu, Sal, and Taman split off. CST moves rapidly through the Chindwin River drainage basin upstream into the Naga Hills. Some branches move across the Indo-Burmese mountain range into Assam, such as Karbi and Bodo-Garo.

5. With the arrival of Northern Austroasiatic speakers at the start of the Bronze Age about 4,000 B.P., Central Sino-Tibetan languages adopt a "Neolithic package" of various technologies and agricultural methods from the newcomers and also mix with them. The arrival of Austroasiatic kicks off a rapid Central Sino-Tibetan diversification, with Kuki-Chin-Naga rapidly spreading into the Naga Hills.

6. The start of the Bronze Age in the Sichuan Basin after 4,000 B.P. leads to the rapid expansion of Burmo-Qiangic, which is associated with the rise of the Sanxingdui Culture. Burmo-Qiangic is not an actual unified branch, but is rather a melting pot of various multiple pre-existing branches that were converging and influencing each other. Qiangic branches spread across western Sichuan, while Lolo-Burmese diversifies and spreads across Yunnan, assimilating previous Sino-Tibetan branch diversity there.

Outline summary

• 1. Sino-Tibetan ( = the paraphyletic Eastern Sino-Tibetan, which contains the following linkages that had split off from Eastern Sino-Tibetan)

     1. Bodish (upstream migration along the Yangtze during the Neolithic)

     2. Western Sino-Tibetan (streams of multiple Neolithic migrations from the Eastern Sino-Tibetan region into Northeast India and beyond)

        1. Central Sino-Tibetan (rapid Bronze Age expansion after splitting off from Western Sino-Tibetan)

How did these four Sino-Tibetan linkages (or "blocs") form? My hypothesis is that these four major linkages largely followed river systems, and in the case of Western Sino-Tibetan, the Himalayan mountain range.

• • Western Sino-Tibetan expanded westward along the Himalayan foothills.

  • Central Sino-Tibetan expanded along the Chindwin River watershed.

  • Eastern Sino-Tibetan expanded along the Yangtze River watershed and Salween River watershed.

  • Bodish expanded along the Brahmaputra River watershed.

Mountain ranges separated the Irrawaddy River system (home to Central Sino-Tibetan) from Western Sino-Tibetan and especially Eastern Sino-Tibetan. Passes and routes through the Naga Hills India from Myanmar have allowed for multiple prehistoric migrations from the Chindwin River region into Assam, where the Brahmaputra River system would have facilitated migrations further westward and also into the Himalayas. Some branches that originated in the Central Sino-Tibetan area but had migrated northwest into the Northeast India area are Bodo-Garo, Lepcha, Karbi, Dhimalish, and perhaps also Tani, Gongduk, and Miju.

Waves of expansions

Map: https://drive.google.com/open?id=19mUt6CE7K7z4T9hzQ_7XAQKjrWyapb-G&usp=sharing

The Sino-Tibetan expansion can be thought of multiple waves of concentric circles expanding out from the Upper Yangtze region. Trees only tell part of the story; the wave model (and my newly proposed "pyramid model" depicting linguistic strata) tells another side of the story. Traditionally, linguists prefer neatly branching trees, but as Matisoff (2013) noted in his paper on Asakian classification, this is a very crude method that cannot fully explain Sino-Tibetan diversification processes. Archaeobotanical studies have also noted this pattern of multiple waves of movements from the Upper Yangtze region into Northeast India.

For Eastern Sino-Tibetan languages:

Wave 1 (early Neolithic; most basal / aberrant branches, all with non-ST substrata):

• 1. Koro

  2. Idu-Taraon

  3. Hrusish

  4. Kho-Bwa

  5. Tujia

  6. Sinitic (earliest layer)

Wave 2 (Middle to Late Neolithic expansions from the Upper Yangtze):

• 1. Nungish

  2. Karenic

  3. Gong (expansion southward starting from Yunnan)

  4. pre-Kathu

  5. Sinitic (secondary layer)

  6. "Donor Jiamao"

  7. "Donor Kra"

  8. "Donor Hmong-Mien"

Wave 3 (pre-Burmo-Qiangic expansions from the Sichuan Basin and northern Yunnan; the branches below are the more divergent branches of the Burmo-Qiangic convergence area, which is due to their having split off before the Burmo-Qiangic linkage started to exist):

• 1. SE Chamdo

  2. rGyalrong

  3. Horpa-Lavrung

  4. pre-Ersuic

Wave 4 (Bronze Age; Burmo-Qiangic convergence and expansion):

• 1. (Core) Qiangic

  2. Lolo-Burmese

  3. Naic

For Western Sino-Tibetan languages:

Wave 1 (most basal / aberrant Western ST branches; both before and during the spread of Austroasiatic into NE India ~3,500-4,000 years ago; links are ultimately with pre-Burmo-Qiangic branches [rGyalrong, Horpa-Lavrung, Ersuic, Lolo-Burmese, etc.] and Nungish in the east, similar to how Malayo-Polynesian languages have links with multiple Formosan branches):

• 1. Miju, Meyor

  2. Tani

  3. Lepcha

  4. Mru-Hkongso (prior to Central ST convergence)

  5. pre-Sal (prior to Central ST convergence)

  6. Gongduk

  7. Ole

Wave 2 (subsequent spread of Western ST branches into Nepal, etc.):

• 1. West Himalayish

  2. Raji-Raute

  3. Greater Magaric (Kham, Magar, Chepang; perhaps also Dura)

  4. Newaric

  5. Kiranti

  6. Lhokpu-Dhimalish

  7. pre-Tshangla

Wave 3 (secondary expansions during the Late Bronze Age; a Central ST convergence area starts to appear):

• 1. Kuki-Chin-Naga

  2. Pyu

  3. Sal

  4. etc.

Wave 4 (Iron Age expansion of Bodish, which started out as Western ST but then mixed with various non-Bodish languages):

• 1. Basum

  2. Tamangic

  3. Kaike

  4. East Bodish

  5. Tibetic

The following branches contain non-Sino-Tibetan substrata along with superstrata of early Sino-Tibetan splits. A similar parallel would be the shift of Negritos in the Philippines from non-Austronesian languages to early forms of Malayo-Polynesian (see Reid 2013).

• • Lepcha: AA > early WST

  • Mru-Hkongso: AA > early CST

  • Koro: Siangic > early ST

  • Idu-Taraon: Siangic > early ST

  • Hrusish: pre-Hrusish > early ST

  • Kho-Bwa: pre-Kho-Bwa > early ST

  • Tujia: pre-Tujia > early ST

  • Sinitic: pre-Sinitic > early ST

Kuki-Chin-Naga, Sal, Tani, Karenic, and Lolo-Burmese also have many Austroasiatic loanwords, but not enough influence to actually have Austroasiatic substrata.

Classification difficulties

With multiple waves of Sino-Tibetan branches constantly expanding and absorbing each other, a very mixed scenario results. Hence, Sino-Tibetan internal classification is not a near, straightforward tree-like process, but is rather more like an intricately woven tapestry of multiple linguistic layers laid onto each other. Classifying Sino-Tibetan languages is a complex task that cannot be completely solved by computational methods alone, but must also be carefully sorted out by hand. Difficulties with analyzing highly eroded synchronic languages and paucity of data for some branches mean that a lot more remains to be done. Proto-languages for some branches remain to be reconstructed.

Some branches have also been heavily influenced by Sinitic and Tibetic.

Branches with Tibetic superstrata and non-Tibetic substrata:

• 1. Tshangla

  2. Baima

Branches with many Tibetic loanwords:

• 1. West Himalayish

  2. Chepangic

  3. Southeast Chamdo

  4. Qiangic

  5. Horpa-Lavrung

  6. rGyalrong

Branches with Old Chinese superstrata and non-Sinitic substrata:

• 1. Bai

  2. Cai-Long

  3. Tujia

Maps

Timeline

Here is my timeline of how Sino-Tibetan diversified.

• • Early Neolithic (9,000 BP - 7,000 BP): Sino-Tibetan as a language family starts taking shape as hunter-gatherers spread out throughout the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, and Upper Yangtze river systems gradually become sedentary and adopt mixed subsistence strategies, including both foraging and early forms of agriculture. The Holocene Climate Optimum (i.e., improving climate after the Last Glacial Maximum) would have allowed for demographic expansions and increasing trade and marriage networks. The Western, Central, and Eastern linkages begin to form in their respective river valley systems.

  • Middle Neolithic (7,000 BP - 5,000 BP): Various early Western Sino-Tibetan branches expand from the Brahmaputra Valley into Bhutan and Nepal, following the Himalayan foothills westward. Agriculture arrives from the east via the Upper Yangtze river system into the Greater Himalayan region. Early Eastern Sino-Tibetan branches also expand down the Yangtze River. rGyalrong, Horpa-Lavrung, and Tujia, expand upstream from the Sichuan Basin, while Sinitic expands across the Central China Plains and comes into contact with early Altaic and pre-Austronesian speakers, and perhaps also people who spoke various languages of unknown affiliation.

  • Late Neolithic (5,000 BP - 4,000 BP): A major climate catastrophe (the 4.2 kiloyear or Bond-3 event) occurs about 4,200 B.P., which causes massive flooding across central and southern China. This results in massive population dislocations across the Yangtze River valley, causing agricultural populations to disperse towards the south and west. Austroasiatic speakers, originally located in Guangxi, migrate into Indochina as a result of climate change, social changes, and introduction of agriculture from Middle Yangtze area.

  • Bronze Age (4,000 BP - 2,500 BP): Sal and Kuki-Chin-Naga start expanding rapidly across northern and central Myanmar as groups of resident Sino-Tibetan speakers adopt technology and agriculture from incoming Austroasiatic speakers, also mixing with them. Austroasiatic speakers arrive from the east approximately 3,500 BP, which is when the Bronze Age of north-central Myanmar begins. Sinitic also expands rapidly due to the expansion of the Shang Dynasty, absorbing linguistic diversity in the Middle Yangtze and helping to stimulate the formations of new Bronze Age creoles in southern China, namely Hmong-Mien and Kra-Dai. Burmo-Qiangic, associated with the Sanxingdui Culture, also expands rapidly from the Sichuan Basin using various Upper Yangtze tributaries such as the Min, Yalong, Dadu, and Jinsha river systems. Expansions from the Sichuan Basin into the Yunnan Plateau occur due to a combination of demographic pressures and searching for natural resources. Burmo-Qiangic absorbs earlier Sino-Tibetan diversity and influences branches in upstream areas such as rGyalrong, Horpa-Lavrung, and Tujia. Bodish expands across the Tibetan Plateau, aided by Sinitic technology and new cold-resistant crops introduced from the north and east via Altaic speakers.

  • Iron Age (2,500 BP - 1,700 BP): Most Sino-Tibetan branches are established and are more or less in their present locations. They continue to expand and assimilate residual Sino-Tibetan branches. Sinitic, Tai, Lolo-Burmese, and Tibetic spread rapidly and assimilate branches that had diverified during the Bronze Age and earlier.