Language dispersals and the “Secondary Peoples’ Revolution”

Abstract

Population growth and demic diffusion help explain the early Neolithic expansions of agriculture and Transeurasian languages in Northeast Asia. By the Bronze Age, alluvial agrarian states had come to possess considerable political and economic dominance over their subjects in the civilizational centers of Eurasia. At the same time, however, Bronze Age economies offered new opportunities for trade and secondary expansion into areas outside state control. This chapter argues that the resulting population movements—here termed the “secondary peoples’ revolution”—were of great significance in the post-Neolithic dispersals of Transeurasian languages. Four examples are briefly discussed: steppe nomadic pastoralism, Sakha horse and cattle husbandry, northeast Asian hunter-gatherers, and agriculture associated with trade/piracy networks in the Ryukyu Islands.