Glacial Geography and Native North American Languages

Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis that the number and distribution of some native American languages may be related to ice-margin changes of the Wisconsin glaciation. The analysis indicated that the number of languages per unit area is much greater in unglaciated areas of the last glacial maximum than in glaciated areas. The pattern of languge overlap between land areas sequentially exposed during deglaciation appears to indicate the direction of movement of populations from the periphery toward the core of the area once covered by the Wisconsin Ice Sheet. The data strongly indicate that North America was inhabited prior to the Wisconsin glacial maximum, because glacial maximum conditions apparently influenced linguistic distributions. Evidence suggests that ancestral Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene speakers occupied the northwestern edge of the continental ice mass, and that ancestral Algonquian speakers were south of the ice mass during the Wisconsin glacial maximum (approximately 18,000 yr ago). These three linguistic groups were the principal ones to spreas into areas exposed by the recession of the Wisconsin ice.