Embedded Files
Speakers
Prof. Dr. George van Driem
Prof. Dr. George van Driem
George van Driem occupies the chair for Historical Linguistics at the University of Berne, where he directs the Linguistics Institute. He has conducted field research in the greater Himalayan region since 1983. He has published several grammars of previously undescribed Himalayan languages and authored the book "Ethnolinguistic Prehistory; the Peopling of the World from the Perspective of Language, Genes and Material Culture" (Brill, 2021).
Abstract
Topic: The Ancestral Homeland of the Naga Peoples Based on Language and Genes
Many people in the Northeast think that their ancestors came from Mongolia because they have been told that they are members of the “Mongoloid race”. However, modern molecular genetics has taught us that there is no such thing as race. Furthermore, human population genetics has shown us that the ancestors of Naga language communities and, for that matter, many other peoples of the Northeast did not come from Mongolia. Where and when did the idea of a “Mongoloid race” originate in the first place? What refined understanding of the intricacies of our multiple ancestries has today replaced the early racial fictions of impressionistic somatological categories. What insights have we gained about Naga origins on the basis of the findings of comparative historical linguistics? What does population genetics tell us about the prehistory and ancestry of the Naga peoples?
Optional pre-reading (please click the link):
-van Driem, George. 2018. ‘The Eastern Himalaya and the Mongoloid myth’, pp. 12-41 in Sanjoy Hazarika and Reshmi Banerjee, eds., Gender, Poverty and Livelihood in the Eastern Himalaya. Abingdon: Routledge.
-van Driem, George. 2014. ‘A prehistoric thoroughfare between the Ganges and the Himalayas’, pp. 60-98 in Tiatoshi Jamir and Manjil Hazarika, eds., 50 Years after Daojali-Hading: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Northeast India. New Delhi: Research India Press.
-van Driem, George. 2014. ‘Trans-Himalayan’, pp. 11-40 in Nathan Hill and Thomas Owen-Smith, eds., Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dr. Jelle J.P. Wouters
Dr. Jelle J.P. Wouters
Jelle J.P. Wouters is a social anthropologist and teaches in the Department of Social Sciences at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan. He holds an MPhil (distinction) in social anthropology from the University of Oxford and a PhD in anthropology from the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he was also a Wenner-Gren grantee. Prior to joining Royal Thimphu College in 2015, he taught at Sikkim Central University, India, and was a visiting faculty at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, under the ‘Excellence Initiative’ of the German Research Foundation. He has written about political lifeworlds, democracy and elections, insurgency and violence, kinship and identity, capitalism and resource-extraction, and social history in Northeast India for Geopolitics, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Studies in History, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, amongst others. He is the author of In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State and Violence in Northeast India (OUP, 2018), Nagas as a Society Against Voting and Other Essays (Highlander Books, 2019) and the co-editor of Nagas in the 21st Century (Highlander Books, 2017) and Democracy in Nagaland: Tribes, Traditions, and Tensions (Highlander Books, 2018).
Abstract
Topic: Thinking through Naga origin and migration stories
Chairperson
Dr. Sahiinii L. Veikho
Dr. Sahiinii L. Veikho
Sahiinii teaches at Asufii Christian Institute as an Assistant Professor. He completed Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and conducts collaborative research work with local organizations to promote and preserve Naga culture and languages.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse