What Makes the Caucasian Family of Languages Unique?
Peoples, languages and genes in the Caucasus: An Introduction
The Caucasus region, dominated past the imposing Bang-up Caucasus mountain range and stretching between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, has long been known as one of the world'south ethnically and linguistically most various areas. According to the Roman historian Pliny, when the Romans came to the Caucasus, they needed 134 interpreters to bargain with the jumble of languages they found. The tenth century Arab geographer and historian al-Azizi referred to the area as the "mountain of languages". Today, this relatively minor area (virtually the size of New England) is habitation non only to over 100 languages, but to four distinct linguistic communication families that are indigenous and unique to the region: the Northwest Caucasian family, the Northeast Caucasian family, the Nakh family and the South Caucasian (or Kartvelian) family unit. In addition, several languages from families common elsewhere – Indo-European and Turkic – are spoken by various groups in the Caucasus region as well. Like the linguistic situation, the ethnic state of affairs too presents a complex and highly mosaic motion picture, because ethnicity correlates closely, though not perfectly, as we shall run across below, with the languages (meet map on the left).
The southern office of the region – Transcaucasus – consists of the three former Soviet Republics, now independent countries of Georgia, Armenia and Republic of azerbaijan. Georgia is home to ethno-linguistic groups speaking South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages: Georgian (4 one thousand thousand speakers), Svan (15,000 speakers in northern Georgian region of Svanetia; meet motion-picture show on the left), and Mingrelian (500,000 speakers). (The quaternary Kartvelian language, Laz is spoken past 30,000 people in Turkey.) Most speakers of Kartvelian languages are Christian (Georgian Orthodox), but there are smaller groups of Kartvelian speakers in southern Georgia who are Muslim. In addition to Kartvelian-speaking majority, Georgia has a number of other groups: Armenians (5.seven%), Azeris (six.7%), Ossetians (0.9%), Russians (1.v%), Greeks (0.3%), Ukrainians (0.two%) and others (figures are from the 2002 census).
The other two majority languages in the Transcaucasus region belong to linguistic communication families found outside the area: Armenian is an Indo-European linguistic communication (it is an isolate not closely related to whatsoever other Indo-European languages), and Azerbaijani cluster is a Turkic language, closely related to Turkish, too as Turkmen (spoken in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan) and Gagauz (a minority linguistic communication in Moldova). There are also pregnant minority Armenian and Azeri groups in other countries south of the Caucasus (Turkey, Islamic republic of iran, etc.). Armenians are predominantly Christian (Armenian Orthodox), whereas Azeris are more often than not Shi'a Muslims.
Although both Armenians and Azeris are linguistically related to populations outside the Caucasus (Indo-European and Turkic, respectively), genetic studies indicate that both groups are more closely related genetically to their geographic neighbors in the Caucasus than to their linguistic relatives elsewhere (east.g. Nasidze and Stoneking 2001; Nasidze et al. 2001). Like other Caucasian populations, the gene pools of both Armenians and Azeris are intermediate between those of Europeans and Near Eastern populations of the northern Fertile Crescent: the Turks and the Kurds, likewise every bit Iraqi and North African Jews (see chart). These genetic results indicate that both Armenians and Azeris are descendants of Neolithic migrants from the Nigh East who later adopted a different language via the procedure that Colin Renfrew called "elite authority", whereby the language of a small invading grouping is adopted by the larger resident population, either considering it is imposed past force or considering it is considered socially desirable to speak the linguistic communication of the invaders. The origins of the Armenian language are obscure, but the Azeri language was probably introduced in the 11th century CE past central Asian nomads (Johanson 1998).
The state of affairs in Armenia and Azerbaijan is further complicated by the fact that both countries used to take significant minority populations associated with the other land. For example, Armenians constituted 11.six% of the population in Azerbaijan in 1886, and Azeris constituted 34.two% of Armenia's population in 1897. Today, these minority populations accept dwindled down considerably: approximately, 120,000 Armenians still live in Azerbaijan, but Azeris have been driven out of Armenia and no longer appear as a category in any 21st century census data. The almost recent, 2009 Azerbaijani census lists the following minority groups: Kurds, Tat and Talysh (all three Iranian-speaking groups); Lezgin, Udi, Avar, Tsakhur, Kryz, Khinalug (all speaking Northeast Caucasian languages); Georgians (Kartvelian-speaking); Russians and Ukrainians (Slavic-speaking); Turks and Tatars (Turkic-speaking), and Jews (speaking different languages).* Today's population of Armenia is much more homogeneous and overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian (97.9% in 2001 census), with tiny minority groups of Yezidis (1.3%) and Russians (0.5%).
Moving over the crest of the Caucasus mount range, we find an even more complicated ethno-linguistic pic in the North Caucasus. While geopolitically, all of this area is function of the Russian federation, a number of its internal republics constitute the North Caucasus belt (from west to east): Adyghea, Karachai-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Northward Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. Ethno-linguistically, North Caucasus is home to v distinct groups (also from west to east): Northwest Caucasian groups, including Adygeis, Circassians and Kabardians, besides as Abkhazians in the neighboring Georgia; Turkic-speaking Karachays and Balkars; Iranian-speaking Ossetians (four of the forthcoming GeoCurrents posts will be defended specifically to them); Nakh-speaking Ingush and Chechens; and groups speaking Northeast Caucasian (or Dagestanian) languages, such as Agul, Avar, Dargin, Lak, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, and many others. Genetic studies too (e.one thousand. Balanovsky et al. 2011) confirm the distinctiveness of these groups, every bit each 1 appears to be associated with its own predominant genetic signature (run across map below; Turkic-speaking groups are non shown).
The Ossetians and the Turkic-speaking groups are relative newcomers to the expanse. Ossetians are linguistic descendants of the Iranian-speaking groups who arrived from the steppes to the north(east) around some fourth dimension between 1000 BCE and 500 CE, followed by Turkic speakers around thou-1500 CE. According to Balanovsky et al. (2011: 2906), "the new migrants forced the indigenous Caucasian population to relocate from the foothills into the loftier mountains", thus repeating the centuries sometime blueprint, described by Johanna Nichols of UC Berkeley: newly arrived groups push earlier inhabitants up the slopes or impose their language on them.
Consider, for example, Tsezic languages, including Bezhta (#8 on the map), Hunzib (#16), Dido (#13), Hinukh (#15) and Khvarshi (#21). According to Nichols, this is the co-operative that separate of the rest of the Dagestanian family the primeval, effectually 2,000 years ago; at present, they are spoken at the highest altitudes forth the crest of the mountain range. Andic languages, including Akhvakh (#ii), Andi (#three), Bagvalal (#six), Botlikh (#ix), Chamalal (#10), Ghodoberi (#14), Karata (#20) and Tindi (#29), whose split of the balance of the family tree is more recent, occupy the medium altitude belt, whereas the relatively new (and structurally simplified) Avar (#5) is spoken at the lowest altitudes.
The vertical dimension is important also because of the widespread patterns of the so-called "vertical bilingualism": residents of highland villages – typically, men – participate in seasonal migrations to lowlands regions offer markets and winter pastures at lower altitudes and generally know the language of a lower village, but not vice versa. For instance, speakers of Tsezic languages oft speak some Andic language, whereas Andic speakers may be quite fluent in Avar (the latter also serves equally a lingua franca in other areas of Dagestan, as marked on the map).
*Equally we tin can run into, most ethnic groups listed in the demography data are associated with a language. However, censuses in this region still list Jews equally an ethnic (rather than religious) grouping, following the mutual practice during the Soviet times.
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Balanovsky, O; Grand Dibirova; A Dybo; O Mudrak; Southward Frolova; East Pocheshkhova; Yard Haber; D Platt; T Schurr; W Haak; M Kuznetsova; M Radzhabov; O Balaganskaya; A Romanov; T Zakharova; D F Soria Hernanz; P Zalloua; S Koshel; M Ruhlen; C Renfrew; R Due south Wells; C Tyler-Smith; Due east Balanovska; and The Genographic Consortium (2011) Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus Region. Molecular Biological science and Evolution 28(ten): 2905–2920.
Johanson L (1998) The history of Turkic. In: Johanson L, Csato E (eds) The Turkic languages. Routledge, London, pp 81–83.
Nasidze I, Stoneking Yard (2001) Mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic acid variation and language replacements in the Caucasus. Proc R Soc Lond 268:1197–1206.
Nasidze I, Risch GM, Robichaux K, Sherry ST, Batzer MA, Stoneking M (2001) Alu insertion polymorphisms and the genetic construction of human populations from the Caucasus. Eur J Hum Genet ix:267–272.
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