This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history. While most ethno-linguistic groups have a longstanding history and a clear ethnic and linguistic... Show moreThis study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history. While most ethno-linguistic groups have a longstanding history and a clear ethnic and linguistic affiliation, the formation of the Dolgans has been a relatively recent development, and their ethnic origins as well as their linguistic affiliation have been a matter of debate. According to some scholars, the Dolgans, who inhabit the Taimyr Peninsula and the Anabar district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), are Turkic people who adopted a Tungusic name and certain Tungusic cultural features. Others hold the view that they have Tungusic origins but shifted to a Turkic language. Migrations and frequent contacts with other ethnic groups complicate a reconstruction of their past. Accepting the idea that contact settings may correlate with linguistic outcomes, contact-induced changes in Dolgan are analysed and used to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred. The linguistic conclusions are interpreted in a multidisciplinary context, integrating insights from history, ethnography as well as from population genetics. In particular, linguistic patterns of contact influence are correlated with genetic admixture patterns, providing new insights into the prehistoric migration patterns of the Dolgans. Due to its holistic approach, this study provides an example of the innovative ways in which data from different disciplines can be combined to gain a deeper understanding of a people__s past and identity, and provides a valuable contribution to the investigation of Siberian history. Show less
This study analyses the prehistory of a northeastern Siberian population, the Sakha (Yakuts), from both a linguistic and a molecular-genetic perspective. The Sakha, who are a Turkic-speaking group... Show moreThis study analyses the prehistory of a northeastern Siberian population, the Sakha (Yakuts), from both a linguistic and a molecular-genetic perspective. The Sakha, who are a Turkic-speaking group of cattle- and horse-breeders, migrated to the Lena river from an area further to the south several hundred years ago. This investigation elucidates the extent to which the Sakha interacted with the indigenous populations of the territory that they migrated to, both from the perspective of language contact and from the perspective of genetic admixture. The results show that the Sakha were in contact with two different groups during their history: with speakers of a Mongolic language and with speakers of Evenki. The contact with the Mongolic-speaking group took place during the period of the Mongol Empire, when the Sakha introduced a large number of Mongolic substance copies into their language. In contrast, the contact with the Evenks led to the introduction of a number of schematic copies, but only a relatively small amount of substance copies from Evenki into Sakha. The nature of the copies from Evenki implies that the Sakha were dominantly bilingual in Evenki; surprisingly, however, there is no genetic evidence for the shift of entire Evenk communities to the Sakha language and identity. One explanation for the discrepancy between the linguistic and the genetic results is that the schematic copies entered the language through frequent social interaction of Evenks and Sakha during the initial period after the migration, when the Sakha were few in number. This is an interdisciplinary study that combines both molecular anthropological as well as linguistic methods to elucidate the prehistoric contacts undergone by a northeastern Siberian group of cattle and horse pastoralists Show less
