Great Basin Prehistory and Uto-Aztecan

Abstract

Studies of the Great Basin show that the Desert cultures of 8000 B.C. closely resemble the historic cultures of that area, but linguistic evidence indicates that the ancestors of the historic inhabitants moved into the Great Basin as late as 1000 years ago. The linguistic affiliation of the prehistoric cultures thus cannot be directly inferred. Taylor has proposed that Hokaltecans settled in the Great Basin at an early age and were only recently replaced by Uto-Aztecans who moved in from the northeast—an offshoot from a major Uto-Aztecan movement down the western flanks of the Rocky Mountains. This hypothesis does not satisfactorily account for the distribution of the major subdivisions of Uto-Aztecan and directly contradicts the implications of the distribution of Numic (Plateau Shoshonean) languages. An alternate hypothesis is proposed, namely, that Uto-Aztecans moved southward from the northern Great Basin as the Altithermal began; that they moved in two major branches which skirted the Great Basin, one along the Rocky Mountains, the other along the Sierras; and that, as the Medithermal set in, the Numic branch (northernmost Sierran branch) began to move back into the Great Basin proper, this movement being retarded until about 1000 years ago by the presence of horticulturists. This hypothesis is supported by correlations between lexico-statistical dating of the separation of Uto-Aztecan languages and the dates of climatic periods, and by the distributions of the major Uto-Aztecan branches. Identification of these branches follows recent linguistic studies by Voegelin and Hale. Previous classifications of Uto-Aztecan languages, theories concerning the location of the ancestral Uto-Aztecan community, and the implications of these for the present hypothesis are discussed.