In building up a scenario for the arrival on the shores of Alaska
of speakers of languages related to Eskimo-Aleut with genetic roots
deep within Sineria, this book touches upon a number of issues in
contemporary historical linguistics and archaeology. The Arctic
"gateway" to the New World, by acting as a bottleneck, has allowed
only small groups of mobile hunter-gatherers through during
specific propitious periods, and thus provides a unique testing
ground for theories about population and language movements in
pre-agricultural times. Owing to the historically attested
prevalence of language shifts and other contact phenomena in the
region, it is arguable that the spread of genes and the spread of
language have been out of step since the earliest reconstructable
times, contrary to certain views of their linkage. Proposals that
have been put forward in the past concerning the affiliations of
Eskimo-Aleut languages are followed up in the light of recent
progress in reconstructing the proto-languages concerned. Those
linking Eskimo-Aleut with the Uralic languages and Yukagir are
particularly promising, and reconstructions for many common
elements are presented. The entire region "Great Beringia" is
scoured for typological evidence in the form of anomalies and
constellations of uncommon traits diagnostic of affiliation or
contact. The various threads lead back to mesolithic times in south
central Siberia, when speakers of a "Uralo-Siberian" mesh of
related languages appears to have moved along the major waterways
of Siberia. Such a scenario would acount for the present
distribution of these languages and the results of their meeting
with remnants of earlier linguistic waves from the Old World to the
New.
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