Technically we know that the geography of a land dictates
the settlement and the travel patterns of the people who inhabit the area, this
would include the drainage patterns of the land mass and the topographic
possibilities for human travel including food consumption.
Linguists or the scientists
who study languages have revealed that there are similarities among some
languages found in the Americas as well as differences which have allowed them
to be grouped into families.[1]
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas including the exact dates and routes traveled, provides the subject of ongoing research and much discussion. It has been a common misconception that there was only one Native American language when in reality there were perhaps a thousand or more individual languages spoken in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans.[2]
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas including the exact dates and routes traveled, provides the subject of ongoing research and much discussion. It has been a common misconception that there was only one Native American language when in reality there were perhaps a thousand or more individual languages spoken in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans.[2]
The Hurons lived in the watershed of the St. Lawrence
River, the Iroquois Confederacy in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, the Shawnee in the
Ohio Valley including the Kanawha and New River, and the Cherokee in the Great
Smoky Mountains with the adjoining plains.
The Great Warrior’s Path, the most significant route of
travel in the Eastern United States, took advantage of the alignment of
Moccasin, Kane and Cumberland Gaps providing passage from the Great Valley into
the Midwest.
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[1]A
family is a collection of languages which shares a common origin and which
separates into different dialects over a given period of time. In today’s
languages this same process may be seen in the case of Romance languages
(Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and a few others) which all
descend from the common base of Latin.
The Romance languages are but one branch of the Indo-European language
family which is the dominant language family in today’s world. English is a part of the Germanic branch of
the Indo-European family. Russian is a
member of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European family. The Romance, Germanic and Slavic branches
constitute the majority of the languages spoken in Europe, but other
Indo-European branches have their homes in Iran and India. The Ural-Altaic family contains Hungarian,
Finnish, Estonia and Turkish which are all spoken in a small corner of one
continent of the world. The Basque language
of Spain and France has no clear relative anywhere else in the world.
[2] At the time of Columbus, North America had much more linguistic variety
than did Europe. The present territory of the continental United States was
home to several (perhaps eight or more) prevalent language families, in
contrast to the two found in Europe. A complex diversity existed
among these languages resulting in speech difficulties among the tribes;
however, it is now
believed that there was a sign language by which communications among members
of diverse tribes located within a specific area which overlapped on the
frontiers with neighboring areas was conducted.
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