mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
This was quite touching, what country is it set in and just who are the Kogung ?
Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
This was quite touching, what country is it set in and just who are the Kogung ?
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Do the elves of this game take their inspiration from a particular work of fiction in this TL (like the elves of D&D were based primarily on those of LOTR in our TL)
Also has Wizards&Warriors inspired the type of moral panic in this TL that D&D did in ours?
I went back to some other actual Germanic myths of elves (and a few related folk-creatures) rather than having the 9217th re-interpretation of Tolkien's re-interpretation of Lord Dunsany's re-interpretation of English folklore.
Perhaps tormented, malicious elves will probably fill the niche that vampires have in modern angst-ridden paranormal romance fiction.
No, you're spot on in that villein is meant to mean peasant. That hasn't changed ITTL. It's just that the pompous letter-writer in this article gets a couple of things wrong when he's trying to appear erudite.
The appearance of snakes in *Halloween is a flow-on from having other forms of folklore incorporated into the modern imagery. These influences come mostly from Aururia, where snakes are much more a part of the folklore (both the large Rainbow Serpent and in other forms), and which have been indirectly included into the *Halloween corpus.
Come to think of it, though, spiders may well still put in an appearance. Having snakes doesn't mean spiders are excluded.
Some things just seem to be an inter-universal constant.
The reason for the change is complicated, but the short version is that it can be blamed on German influence via orthography reform. The rules for the medial s have changed in that it is now not used at the end of syllables, not just the end of words. As part of the same reform, whenever there are ss's together, then they are both written with the short form, even if they don't end a word.
It's set in a country where people can look west and see the Pacific, and where there is enough Spanish influence to adopt their phrasing for "altar of the dead".
The Kogung are a people who have been tangentially referred to before, including a couple of posts back. They are Plirite and are sometimes considered part of the broader Nangu diaspora.
They take their inspiration from a corpus of fiction, without quite the same overwhelming individual influence that Tolkien had on most modern fantasy. (Yes, I know not all modern fantasy is Tolkien-derivative, but you know what I mean). It's a bit how science fiction developed with a variety of influential authors, but no one person had quite the dominance that Tolkien had.
That corpus of fiction is more influenced by other folklorish conceptions of elves (particularly the Danish one) than any equivalent of Tolkien's interpretation.
There are those who are convinced that possessing any form of dice that are not six-sided is prima facie evidence that the possessor is involved in collegial satanic rituals.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Questions
1)So just what are headmen, juntees,and thunder boys
2) I thought thralls was just another word for slaves?
3) Are the lamias of this TL's Halloween imagery the snake-bodied ones
or the beast-bodied ones
Spiders are a lot more visual than snakes, ISTM. And spiders also bring in webs, which are very visual, and associated with crypts and tombs and such.
I think perhaps the strong use of spider imagery is somewhat over-determined.
Headmen are animal-headed men. Often jackals (hello, Anubis) or eagles.
Thunder boys are... well, think of the "three storms" from Big Trouble in Little China and you won't be too far off. Or think ninja but more supernatural.
Juntees... the explanation of that one is still a little way into the future.
Thralls are undead. Closer to vampires than zombies, though not exactly either. Based on certain Icelandic sagas (which exist OTL), but with the creatures having undergone some creative reinterpretations over the centuries.
Closer to the beast-bodied model.
Something like that, but again, not very close. One of their properties is that actually killing them is difficult; even their ashes can come back to life.
I agree that spiders will put in an appearance too. I've amended the latest instalment to reflect that.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Something from Australian religion/folklore?
Oh good, that is my favorite kind of lamia
Max Sinister
Banned
A very nice Halloween special. The only thing that strikes me as odd: The letter is written in a very old-timey style for 1964, even leaving aside the thing with the ʃ. (But consider that I'm not a native English speaker.)
Yes, the juntee is a creature from Aururian folklore. Not something closely related to an OTL Australian folklorific creature, though.
Certainly allohistorical speech patterns have changed, but there's more going on.
A significant part of that comes from the fact that the writer is communicating in Scots, or at least the allohistorical twentieth-century version of Scots. Peeling back the veil a bit, the medial s has been retained (with reformed rules) in Scots, and that's at least partly because it makes for a nice visual distinction if the writer wants to show that they're writing in Scots.
Another significant part of the change is that formal letter-writing ITTL remains rather more, well, formal than it has evolved to in OTL. For instance, the full valediction "I am pleased to remain your most humble and obedient servant" is retained in official letter writing (e.g. to an MP), in which writing to newspapers is included ITTL. Of course, few writers in 1964 would include the full version to newspapers, but they would use a contracted version, e.g. "I remain your servant".
The biggest part, though, is that the letter-writer is just this timeline's equivalent of Clive Pompous-Arse.
Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #6: An Allohistorical Conundrum
Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #6: An Allohistorical Conundrum
I’m still putting the finishing touches on the next post regarding Prince Rupert’s War. In the meantime, this is an interlude post which gives an overview of how human origins may be (mis)understood in the Lands of Red and Gold timeline. It also includes a couple of minor retcons regarding linguistics in allohistorical Australia.
* * *
The introductory section of this post provides a brief background for those who are not familiar with the “Out of Africa” theory of human origins, mitochondrial DNA, and “mitochondrial Eve”. Without knowing this, the rest of this post will not make much sense. If you are already familiar with these topics, feel free to skip over to the rest of the post.
The Out of Africa theory states that current (anatomically modern) humans, Homo sapiens, evolved from older (archaic) Homo sapiens in Africa relatively recently, somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. These modern humans then left Africa and spread out across the world. Along the way, they replaced older populations of humans such as the Neanderthals and Homo erectus whose ancestors had left Africa up to 2 million years ago. According to the Out of Africa theory, this exodus of modern humans had little or no interbreeding with the previous populations of other humans.
The evidence for Out of Africa comes from a combination of fossil and genetic evidence. The fossil evidence of human ancestors is usually interpreted to support the recent single-origin hypothesis (aka Out of Africa), although some palaeontologists disagree.
The genetic evidence comes from mitochondrial DNA. This is DNA which is found not in the nucleus of cells (nuclear DNA), but in the mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside all animal cells. Mitochondria have their own DNA, and indeed they reproduce separately to the main cell (in mammals, at least).
Studying mitochondrial DNA is useful for two reasons. It mutates quickly, so it is easier to track ancestry due to variations in mitochondrial DNA than it is for nuclear DNA. More importantly, it is transmitted only in the female line: males do not pass on their mitochondrial DNA to their children [1]. This means that mitochondrial DNA can be used to trace the most recent maternal-line ancestor of all living humans: one woman for whom all living people can trace an unbroken female line of ancestry to themselves (for women) or to their mother (for men). This woman is known as “mitochondrial Eve” [2].
Genetic evidence suggests that mitochondrial Eve lived somewhere between 140,000 to 200,000 years ago, probably in East Africa. This timeframe is much more recent than when the first human relatives moved out of Africa (up to 2 million years ago), and so provides strong support for the Out of Africa theory.
The competing model is known as the multi-regional hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the modern species of humans arose around 2 million years ago, as the first humans moved out of Africa. All of human evolution since then has been within a single species. In other words, all (or most) humans alive at that time have descendants alive today, and (for example) the people who currently live in Java and China are descended from those Homo erectus who moved into those regions over 1 million years ago.
The Out of Africa theory received further support when palaeontologists were able to sequence mitochondrial DNA from archaic fossils, such as Neanderthals. When compared to nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA is easier to extract from fossils because there is more of it, and thus it is more likely to survive. Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has been found to be outside of the modern human range, which means that modern humans share a more recent common matrilineal ancestor than Neanderthals.
More recent techniques have allowed the extraction of nuclear DNA from some fossils, and this has shown that there is some ancestry surviving from other archaic human lineages. All non-sub-Saharan African humans have inherited about 1-4% of their nuclear DNA from Neanderthals. Another species of humans known as Denisovans, from Siberia, have been shown to have contributed about 4-6% of the nuclear DNA of Papuans, Melanesians and Australian Aborigines.
However, the consensus is that the Out of Africa theory is broadly correct, with only limited, mostly regional interbreeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly one or two other lineages.
Or that is the historical consensus, anyway. Allohistorical science may reach a different conclusion.
* * *
Taken from a popular science article which appeared in Criterion.
In terms of chronology, this article is written after the allohistorical development of the (expensive) technology to sample mitochondrial DNA from living humans (late 1970s to early 1980s, historically), but before DNA sequencing technology has advanced enough to allow the full sequencing of the human genome (about 2000, historically) or extraction of mitochondrial DNA from fossil hominids (also about 2000, historically). The state of technology means that it is possible to estimate timeframes for nuclear DNA divergences from a common ancestor (DNA hybridisation), but they cannot yet read nuclear DNA in detail to determine that (for example) non-sub-Saharan Africans have 1-4% of their DNA inherited from Neanderthals.
An Aururian Enigma: The Puzzle of Human Origins
Where did we come from? What led human beings to appear on the world and then colonise the globe?
Until a couple of years ago, the story of human origins was straightforward. Humans evolved in Africa. Our ancestors split from the ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas around 6 or 7 million years ago, evolved into upright walkers, then tool users, then finally into big-brained humans.
Around 2 million years ago Homo erectus became the first human species to leave Africa and spread across Asia, India and Europe. Further waves of human species invaded the Old World from Africa over the next 1.8 million years. Until our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged in East Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, spread out across Africa, and then the entire globe. All of the predecessor human species went extinct, replaced by modern humans.
The first evidence for this came from fossils exhumed from the earth. A series of fossils, some well-known, some familiar only to scientists, tell this story. These fossils clearly show the sequence of human evolution, with some of the most famous such as Peiping Man, Java Man, and Neanderthals demonstrating a long human history outside of Africa.
But fossils alone could not prove the recent emergence of Homo sapiens and our expansion across the globe at the expense of previous human species. The fossils suggested that replacement had taken place, but they were not conclusive, and palaeontological arguments were frequent. The African Exodus model, as it is known, needed more evidence.
That evidence came from genetics.
Inside every cell in your body you have deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA [3]. Your DNA contains your genes, the instructions which code for how you develop and grow: in other words, what makes you, you. The main set of instructions is contained in the nucleus of your cells. This is called nuclear DNA.
But it turns out that you have another set of DNA in your cells. Your cells contain many little organs called mitochondria, which convert energy into a form which your cells can use. These mitochondria have their own DNA that gives instructions for how they behave, separate from the DNA in the nucleus. It is this mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which matters for the story of our origins.
The nuclear DNA in your cells is recombined every generation. That is, every generation the nuclear DNA from a mother and father is mixed together in their descendants. This is good for the survival of our species, since it allows beneficial genes to spread quickly throughout the human population. But it is bad for scientists trying to trace a single line of ancestry, since nuclear DNA is mixed up every generation.
Fortunately, mtDNA does not have the same pattern. You inherit your mtDNA only from your mother. This means that scientists can trace a person’s enatic ancestry: the unbroken female line of mother to daughter, going back through the generations. Until this line converges on a single woman.
This woman has been called “mitochondrial Eve”. Every person alive today is descended from her in unbroken maternal-line descent. Mitochondrial Eve is not the only woman who had descendants alive today, but for every other woman all of her descendants had only sons at least once. This breaks the maternal-line of descent, and means that each other woman’s mtDNA was not passed on.
Scientists had long known that there must have been a mitochondrial Eve alive at some point in history. But they had believed that she had lived a very long time ago, perhaps as much as 2 million years.
This changed with improvements in DNA extraction technology. Now scientists could recover the mtDNA from people around the globe, and from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas. Researchers could then determine the mutation rates of mtDNA, and create a “molecular clock” to estimate how long ago mitochondrial Eve lived.
This is what gave researchers a big surprise. It turned out that mitochondrial Eve had lived between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. This was much more recent than most scientists had expected. And it meant that we could not be descended from the earlier human species which moved out of Africa 2 million years ago. Our common ancestry is much too recent.
This discovery led to the widespread adoption of the African Exodus model, to the point where it became the accepted story of human origins. The rival explanation, called continuous-descent, held that all of the humans who had left Africa from Homo erectus onward had evolved into modern humans, all over the Old World. After finding out about the mtDNA evidence, most scientists abandoned the continuous-descent model. The eminent Trevor Brandreth continued to argue for it, but despite his eloquence, he found himself almost alone in supporting the continuous-descent model.
Until two years ago, when the story of human origins was turned on its head.
New developments in DNA extraction such as pyrosequencing and radiation hybrid mapping have allowed scientists to extract mtDNA much more quickly and cheaply. With the promise that these new technologies offered, anthropologists from several universities around the world set up a collaboration nicknamed the Exodus Project.
The aim of the Exodus Project was to trace the ancient migrations that had occurred during the African Exodus. They could achieve this because mtDNA can be used to do more than just estimate the age of the original mitochondrial Eve. By comparing common mutations amongst groups of human mtDNA, scientists can trace more recent maternal-line ancestors of groups of people, based on those who share a common subgroup, or haplogroups as the anthropologists christened these divisions.
One of the universities which participated in the Exodus Project was the Panipat. And it is here that the story of human origins came in for some retelling.
The original researchers who identified mitochondrial Eve had used mtDNA from several Congxie men and women to substitute for both Aururian and Amerindian heritage. While that was considered a reasonable approximation for measuring broad patterns of mtDNA-term heritage [4], it was obviously insufficient for a detailed study such as the Exodus Project.
To correct this problem, anthropologist Dr Kirra Marrara, from the Panipat, set out to collect mtDNA from people across Aururia. With the support of several graduate students, she quickly gathered and sequenced mtDNA from many people across the continent. When she analysed the genetic data, she got a result which no-one could have predicted, save perhaps for lone wolf Professor Brandreth.
Most of the mitochondrial DNA obtained from Aururians fit into haplogroups which other researchers were gathering from around the world. These were most closely related to haplogroups found elsewhere in the southern Pacific, and more distantly to haplogroups from India and southern Asia. But from some parts of Aururia, Marrara found a haplogroup of mtDNA which was incredibly different not just to other Aururians, but to mtDNA found anywhere else in the world.
That is, most Aururians have the same common mitochondrial ancestry that humans around the world share. But a few do not. This new lineage, which Marrara christened “haplogroup K!” is so different from other human mtDNA that estimates from the molecular clock show that it diverged from other humans about 800,000 to 1 million years ago.
How could a small fraction of Aururians have this ancestry, while no-one else anywhere on the planet has such a lineage in their mtDNA? For this lineage to be explained, it means that mitochondrial Eve must have lived at least 800,000 years ago, in some unknown location, and at least 750,000 years before humans entered Aururia. Stranger still, all the humans who lived in Aururia were modern Homo sapiens: no fossils of older humans have ever been recovered from the continent.
Apart from haplogroup K!, all of the evidence from mitochondrial DNA shows that the most ancient lineages are found in sub-Saharan Africa, which indicates that mitochondrial Eve lived there. This is consistent with the fossil evidence that shows modern humans emerging in East Africa. But the Aururian anomaly still defies explanation.
Some proponents of the African Exodus model have proposed that haplogroup K! represents some limited interbreeding between the ancestors of Aururians and an archaic lineage of humans, sometime before they arrived on the continent. It is easy to present a potential ancestor: Homo erectus, Java Man, has lived on Java for over a million years, and Java is on the route to Aururia.
But this explanation is not enough. For it cannot explain why this ancient lineage, haplogroup K!, is not found in some of the neighbouring peoples along that migration route. The Papuans are neighbours of Aururia, and until about 10,000 years ago New Guinea was part of the same continent as Aururia. In all of their other mtDNA, the Papuans are the closest group to the Aururians. So if haplogroup K! truly represented interbreeding on the route to Aururia, why is it not found in Papua as well?
That is what anthropologists would dearly love to find out.
* * *
From a follow-up article which appeared in Criterion about a year later.
A Riddle Within An Enigma: The Ongoing Aururian Origin Mystery
Regular readers of this compendium will recall an article of mine which appeared on 22 April last year, describing the puzzle in human origins which has been brought on by the discoveries of Dr Kirra Marrara, or as she now is, Speaker Kirra Marrara.
Marrara’s research has identified an ancient lineage of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is found in some Aururians, and which has befuddled anthropologists ever since. Despite her new duties as a Speaker, she has continued this research.
Marrara has been studying the distribution of mitochondrial DNA within Aururia. Mitochondrial DNA is found in the cells of every human, and it is inherited exclusively from mothers. These properties allow researchers to trace mtDNA lineages within humans, and find out about their shared ancestry, where people migrated in ancient times, and where humans originated.
Other researchers in mtDNA have found that virtually all humans are descended, via their mothers, from a woman nicknamed “mitochondrial Eve”. If you trace your ancestry to your mother, then her mother, and so on, this ancestry will eventually converge on one woman: mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 200,000 years ago, somewhere in East Africa.
Except, as Marrara has found, this is not true for a few Aururians. But only a few, which is the most puzzling part of this mystery. A few Aururians’ mtDNA is part of what is called “haplogroup K!”, a very old lineage from a woman who lived about a million years ago. Who she was, or where she lived, is something that Marrara has been trying to find out.
Marrara has gathered samples of mtDNA from native Aururians across the continent, and her research adds a new puzzle to the existing mystery. It turns out that haplogroup K! is not uniformly distributed across the continent, and it is entirely absent from some regions. More surprisingly still, the distribution of haplogroup K! corresponds to the languages spoken in pre-Houtmanian Aururia.
A detour is necessary here. Linguists have found that at the time of first European contact with Aururia, most of the native languages were divided into two great language families, Gunnagalic and Wuri-Yaoran.
The Gunnagalic language family, containing the largest number of speakers, was spread over the main farming areas in the south and east of the continent and Thijszenia [Tasmania]. But its distribution over that region was not quite complete. Two small language families survived in pockets within that area: the Ngur-Bungan family in the south-eastern highlands and Daluming, and the Thijszenian family, consisting of a group of closely-related languages spoken in central and western Thijszenia. Two other linguistic isolates also survived: Junditmara and Kaoma, the languages of the eponymous peoples.
Within these regions, all of the native peoples practiced farming to some degree, although Thijszenian speakers continued to rely on hunting and gathering for much of their food. From historical and archaeological evidence, we know that Gunnagalic speakers expanded over most of that territory during the last three thousand years: the expansion was still continuing along the Tohu Coast [5] when Europeans arrived in Aururia.
The Wuri-Yaoran language family was spoken over most of the rest of Aururia, stretching from Cape Kumgatu [Cape York] and the Tohu Coast in the north-east to Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin] in the south-west, and including all of the arid regions in the interior. The Wuri-Yaoran language family covered the greatest geographical area of native language families, but it had fewer speakers than Gunnagalic languages, because except for the Yaoran languages in south-western Aururia, its speakers were hunter-gatherers.
As with the Gunnagalic languages, the region formed by the Wuri-Yaoran languages includes other language families. These language families are however crammed into a relatively small area in northern and north-western Aururia, and even then there are some Wuri-Yaoran languages spoken in that area. The exact number of language families is a matter for arguments among linguists, but the usually accepted numbers are between eight and twelve [6]. Linguists collectively refer to these language families as Northern Aururian languages, but this is a geographical term: the various language families are not considered to be any more related to each other than they are Wuri-Yaoran languages [7].
The division of Aururia into two regions was one mostly adopted for linguistic convenience. But it does correspond to what is known of prehistoric fact. The Gunnagalic and Wuri-Yaoran language families are believed to have massively expanded their geographical range over the last few thousand years. Gunnagalic languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Gunnagalic, which was spoken in the Five Rivers about 2500 BC. The Wuri-Yaoran languages are likewise descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Wuri-Yaoran, which is estimated to have emerged around 3000 BC, somewhere in northern Aururia, although the date and location are less certain than with Gunnagalic.
From their ancient heartlands, both language families spread and displaced most of whatever languages were spoken before them. Gunnagalic languages expanded along with agriculture; the reason why the Wuri-Yaoran languages expanded so much is more of a mystery. Regardless of the reasons, the expansion was massive. The few remaining non-Gunnagalic languages of the south-east are those which for one reason or another withstood the Gunnagalic expansion. The Northern Aururian languages are in turn those which survived the Wuri-Yaoran expansion, although again the reason for their survival is uncertain.
The explanation for this distribution of languages was mostly sought by linguists. But Marrara’s genetic research gave an unexpected twist to the story. She sampled mtDNA from native Aururians across the continent, so that all of the relationships could be studied, but she was primarily interested in the distribution of haplogroup K!.
Marrara’s researchers found that haplogroup K! is most common amongst peoples of the Five Rivers. Within that region, about 5% of the population are part of haplogroup K!. In speakers of other Gunnagalic languages, or their descendants, haplogroup K! can still be found, but it is usually less common (3-5%). In non-Gunnagalic peoples of the south-east, haplogroup can be found occasionally, but only as a small percentage of the population (1-2%), and it is lowest of all in speakers of Thijszenian languages (less than 1%).
But among speakers of Wuri-Yaoran and Northern Aururian languages, Marrara’s researchers found that haplogroup K! is almost entirely absent. The lineage is found very occasionally in speakers of languages which border Gunnagalic languages. Otherwise, haplogroup K! has only appeared among Wuri-Yaoran and Northern Aururian speakers who are known to have at least one Gunnagalic speaker in their maternal line.
This separation of haplogroup K! makes the broader story of human origins even more perplexing. The lineage of this haplogroup goes back close to a million years. It probably pre-dates the emergence of language at all, let alone the distribution of two language families which are less than 10,000 years gold. Why should it be restricted only to speakers of a few languages in part of one continent? Aururians have been on that continent for over 40,000 years, and the neighbouring Papuans lived on what was the same continent until 10,000 years ago. For Papuans, Wuri-Yaoran speakers, and Gunnagalic speakers, the rest of their mtDNA is closely related, but not haplogroup K!.
Resolving this dilemma is difficult. When I asked Speaker Marrara if she knew of the reason, she just said, “I have not got even a clue.”
The enigma remains open.
* * *
Allohistorical anthropologists, palaeontologists and linguists are grappling with this mystery because they have not yet discovered a few facts which would make the situation much clearer.
Firstly, they do not yet have the technology to study nuclear DNA thoroughly. Thus they do not yet know that modern Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans as part of their expansion out of Africa, and that traces of that inheritance can still be found in some (but not all) modern human populations. Most prominently, what they do not know is that Australian, Papuan and Melanesian people have inherited some of their nuclear DNA from the Denisovans.
Secondly, they do not yet have access to the extraction techniques which allow for DNA to be extracted from fossils. So they do not know what the mtDNA of Neanderthals or Denisovans looked like, and they cannot compare it to modern human mtDNA. Indeed, they do not know about the Denisovans at all; the fossils have not yet been discovered. Nor have they extracted mtDNA from Homo sapiens fossils in Aururia (around historical Lake Mungo) which reveals the interesting fact that there were some modern humans who had mtDNA which was outside the current modern human range. In other words, some of the first Aururians (and the first Australians) were not descended from the current “mitochondrial Eve”, but an older one, and that particular mtDNA lineage disappeared from historical Australians sometime in the last 40,000 years.
Thirdly, they do not know that about 4000 to 5000 years ago, there was a substantial gene flow between peoples on the Indian subcontinent (probably Dravidian speakers) and Australia/Aururia. This event happened both historically and allohistorically, although the effects were different allohistorically given the changed history of Aururia.
Historically, it appears that there was some contact between India and Australia somewhere over 4000 years ago, with some Indian heritage being transmitted to northern Australia and then spread over the continent. This was also the timeframe when a language family called Pama-Nyungan spread over most of Australia; the only non-Pama-Nyungan languages which remained were in the northern fringes of Australia, around the likely zone where there was contact with India. While the cause is not yet known, the effects were that some northern Australians spread both their languages and some Indian genes across the rest of the continent.
Allohistorically, well, things played out rather differently.
What has happened in Aururia is that an ancient Denisovan mitochondrial DNA lineage has been preserved in a small percentage of the Aururian population. This was a lineage which reached Aururia as part of the first human migrations, but which died out historically sometime after humans arrived on the continent. (Much as other mtDNA lineages which we know were in Australia (at Lake Mungo) disappeared over time). The nuclear DNA lineage from the Denisovans survived historically (and allohistorically), but allohistorically, the random processes of genetic drift did not quite wipe out the Denisovan mtDNA lineage before agriculture emerged in Aururia around 4500 years ago.
Due to a fluke of genetics, relatively more of the first farmers (the Proto-Gunnagal) had the Denisovan mitochondrial lineage which has been christened haplogroup K!. This led to a founder effect: the Gunnagalic speaking peoples had a higher percentage of that lineage in their genome. They carried that genome with them when they spread out across the continent, although it was diluted slightly outside the Five Rivers because there was some interbreeding with hunter-gatherers who either lacked the lineage or possessed it at a much lower percentage.
However, while the Gunnagalic peoples were expanding out of the south-east, there was another linguistic expansion going on across the rest of the continent. It started earlier than the Gunnagalic expansion (which did not really get going until 1000 BC). This earlier expansion was the result of the same Indian contact with Aururia which happened historically with Australia. The Indians who visited Aururia ITTL found hunter-gatherers with essentially the same technology as they had OTL – the only farmers on the continent were far away – and so went home without having anything change for them, or for the wider world.
The language families in northern Aururia were different than their historical counterparts. Such is the consequence of more than ten thousand years of lepidopterans flapping their wings, even if they are trapped at the borders of the continent. But a similar process happened where speakers of one language family – Wuri-Yaoran, in this case – began to spread across the rest of the continent.
What changed allohistorically was that the Wuri-Yaoran expansion, unlike its historical Pama-Nyungan counterpart, ran into the Gunnagalic expansion as those farmers moved out of the farming heartland and spread across the agriculturally suitable areas of south-eastern Aururia. The hunter-gatherer Wuri-Yaorans were unable to displace the farming Gunnagalic peoples, and in a couple of cases were actually engulfed by farmers. But the Wuri-Yaorans spread over the rest of the continent, including to the south-west where their descendants would eventually import farming and become the Atjuntja.
The presence of the migrating Gunnagalic farmers also meant that some other non-Gunnagalic peoples were protected from the Wuri-Yaoran expansion. Their descendants became the surviving mainland peoples who spoke other languages within a predominantly Gunnagalic region, such as the Junditmara masters of aquaculture, and the Nguril and Kaoma in the highlands.
In terms of the genetics, what happened was that the Gunnagalic expansion increased the prevalence of haplogroup K! across much of the continent. However, amongst other peoples the lineage was already nearly extinct, and the spread of Wuri-Yaoran language and Indian genes finally extinguished that haplogroup across the north, centre and west of the continent. Much as it had disappeared historically from Papuans and Melanesians due to genetic drift.
The Gunnagalic peoples never acquired the same Indian heritage that the northern and western Aururians possess, a fact which allohistorical researchers will eventually discover as another major genetic difference within Aururia that aligns with the language barrier. This also meant that haplogroup K! remained, at a low percentage, amongst the other non-Gunnagalic peoples in the south-east of the continent. It is nowhere near as common as it is amongst Gunnagalic speakers, although it became slightly more prevalent because of occasional interbreeding between Gunnagalic and non-Gunnagalic speakers.
* * *
[1] Well, almost always. There is some very limited evidence that occasionally paternal-line mitochondrial DNA is transmitted, but in humans this is so far considered to be negligible.
[2] Mitochondrial Eve was not the only woman of her time that modern humans are descended from. But for every other woman who was alive at the time, at least once all of their descendants had only sons (or no children), and thus their mitochondrial DNA line (the unbroken female line) was extinguished.
In other words, “Mitochondrial Eve” is the last woman who had at least two daughters who in turn still have had an unbroken line of daughters down to the present. If all of the maternal-line descendants of one of those two original daughters have only sons (or no children), then there will be a new “mitochondrial Eve” who lived more recently, and who had at least two daughters who can still trace an unbroken line of daughters down to the present.
Or in other other words, mitochondrial Eve is a moving target. There’s also a “Y-chromosome Adam” who represents the most-recent paternal-line ancestor of all living male humans, but he probably never met mitochondrial Eve.
[3] Yes, I know that DNA would probably have a different name in this timeline, along with just about every other scientific term. However, I’ve chosen to keep most of them the same. An allohistorical scientific account would be unreadable if every second word needed to be [defined] and then remembered for the rest of the instalment. Readability trumps realism, sometimes. (If it helps, think of them as being “translated” from the ATL terms).
[4] It wasn’t a suitable approximation, because what the researchers did not realise was that in their mitochondrial DNA most Congxie are descended from African or Amerindian heritage, not Aururian. (Very few Aururian women joined the Congxie). They would get a different picture if they traced Y-chromosome ancestry (i.e. male-line ancestry) of the Congxie, which has much stronger Aururian heritage.
[5] Tohu Coast means “Sugar Coast” or “Sugar Cane Coast”; the word tohu comes from the name for sugar cane in the Motu language (spoken around historical Port Moresby, New Guinea). The Tohu Coast refers roughly to the coast of eastern Queensland north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
[6] While a precise map is unfortunately lacking, the areas for these language families roughly correspond to those of the so-called non-Pama-Nyungan languages in OTL. These are shown in the map at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_language_families.png. In that map, the yellow languages are Pama-Nyungan, everything else is non-Pama-Nyungan.
[7] The explanation of Aururian linguistics provided in this post contradicts some of the earlier explanations I’d given for the relationship between Aururian languages. For instance, the Yaoran languages are those spoken by the Atjuntja and their subjects in historical south-western Western Australia. I had previously described those as distantly related to Gunnagalic, with Gunnagalic being just one sub-branch of a larger language family which included the Yaoran languages and various languages spoken by peoples who lived in the deserts between them. Based on more recent scientific discoveries, I’ve needed to retcon these linguistic relationships.
* * *
Thoughts?
I’m still putting the finishing touches on the next post regarding Prince Rupert’s War. In the meantime, this is an interlude post which gives an overview of how human origins may be (mis)understood in the Lands of Red and Gold timeline. It also includes a couple of minor retcons regarding linguistics in allohistorical Australia.
* * *
The introductory section of this post provides a brief background for those who are not familiar with the “Out of Africa” theory of human origins, mitochondrial DNA, and “mitochondrial Eve”. Without knowing this, the rest of this post will not make much sense. If you are already familiar with these topics, feel free to skip over to the rest of the post.
The Out of Africa theory states that current (anatomically modern) humans, Homo sapiens, evolved from older (archaic) Homo sapiens in Africa relatively recently, somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. These modern humans then left Africa and spread out across the world. Along the way, they replaced older populations of humans such as the Neanderthals and Homo erectus whose ancestors had left Africa up to 2 million years ago. According to the Out of Africa theory, this exodus of modern humans had little or no interbreeding with the previous populations of other humans.
The evidence for Out of Africa comes from a combination of fossil and genetic evidence. The fossil evidence of human ancestors is usually interpreted to support the recent single-origin hypothesis (aka Out of Africa), although some palaeontologists disagree.
The genetic evidence comes from mitochondrial DNA. This is DNA which is found not in the nucleus of cells (nuclear DNA), but in the mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside all animal cells. Mitochondria have their own DNA, and indeed they reproduce separately to the main cell (in mammals, at least).
Studying mitochondrial DNA is useful for two reasons. It mutates quickly, so it is easier to track ancestry due to variations in mitochondrial DNA than it is for nuclear DNA. More importantly, it is transmitted only in the female line: males do not pass on their mitochondrial DNA to their children [1]. This means that mitochondrial DNA can be used to trace the most recent maternal-line ancestor of all living humans: one woman for whom all living people can trace an unbroken female line of ancestry to themselves (for women) or to their mother (for men). This woman is known as “mitochondrial Eve” [2].
Genetic evidence suggests that mitochondrial Eve lived somewhere between 140,000 to 200,000 years ago, probably in East Africa. This timeframe is much more recent than when the first human relatives moved out of Africa (up to 2 million years ago), and so provides strong support for the Out of Africa theory.
The competing model is known as the multi-regional hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the modern species of humans arose around 2 million years ago, as the first humans moved out of Africa. All of human evolution since then has been within a single species. In other words, all (or most) humans alive at that time have descendants alive today, and (for example) the people who currently live in Java and China are descended from those Homo erectus who moved into those regions over 1 million years ago.
The Out of Africa theory received further support when palaeontologists were able to sequence mitochondrial DNA from archaic fossils, such as Neanderthals. When compared to nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA is easier to extract from fossils because there is more of it, and thus it is more likely to survive. Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has been found to be outside of the modern human range, which means that modern humans share a more recent common matrilineal ancestor than Neanderthals.
More recent techniques have allowed the extraction of nuclear DNA from some fossils, and this has shown that there is some ancestry surviving from other archaic human lineages. All non-sub-Saharan African humans have inherited about 1-4% of their nuclear DNA from Neanderthals. Another species of humans known as Denisovans, from Siberia, have been shown to have contributed about 4-6% of the nuclear DNA of Papuans, Melanesians and Australian Aborigines.
However, the consensus is that the Out of Africa theory is broadly correct, with only limited, mostly regional interbreeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly one or two other lineages.
Or that is the historical consensus, anyway. Allohistorical science may reach a different conclusion.
* * *
Taken from a popular science article which appeared in Criterion.
In terms of chronology, this article is written after the allohistorical development of the (expensive) technology to sample mitochondrial DNA from living humans (late 1970s to early 1980s, historically), but before DNA sequencing technology has advanced enough to allow the full sequencing of the human genome (about 2000, historically) or extraction of mitochondrial DNA from fossil hominids (also about 2000, historically). The state of technology means that it is possible to estimate timeframes for nuclear DNA divergences from a common ancestor (DNA hybridisation), but they cannot yet read nuclear DNA in detail to determine that (for example) non-sub-Saharan Africans have 1-4% of their DNA inherited from Neanderthals.
An Aururian Enigma: The Puzzle of Human Origins
Where did we come from? What led human beings to appear on the world and then colonise the globe?
Until a couple of years ago, the story of human origins was straightforward. Humans evolved in Africa. Our ancestors split from the ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas around 6 or 7 million years ago, evolved into upright walkers, then tool users, then finally into big-brained humans.
Around 2 million years ago Homo erectus became the first human species to leave Africa and spread across Asia, India and Europe. Further waves of human species invaded the Old World from Africa over the next 1.8 million years. Until our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged in East Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, spread out across Africa, and then the entire globe. All of the predecessor human species went extinct, replaced by modern humans.
The first evidence for this came from fossils exhumed from the earth. A series of fossils, some well-known, some familiar only to scientists, tell this story. These fossils clearly show the sequence of human evolution, with some of the most famous such as Peiping Man, Java Man, and Neanderthals demonstrating a long human history outside of Africa.
But fossils alone could not prove the recent emergence of Homo sapiens and our expansion across the globe at the expense of previous human species. The fossils suggested that replacement had taken place, but they were not conclusive, and palaeontological arguments were frequent. The African Exodus model, as it is known, needed more evidence.
That evidence came from genetics.
Inside every cell in your body you have deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA [3]. Your DNA contains your genes, the instructions which code for how you develop and grow: in other words, what makes you, you. The main set of instructions is contained in the nucleus of your cells. This is called nuclear DNA.
But it turns out that you have another set of DNA in your cells. Your cells contain many little organs called mitochondria, which convert energy into a form which your cells can use. These mitochondria have their own DNA that gives instructions for how they behave, separate from the DNA in the nucleus. It is this mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which matters for the story of our origins.
The nuclear DNA in your cells is recombined every generation. That is, every generation the nuclear DNA from a mother and father is mixed together in their descendants. This is good for the survival of our species, since it allows beneficial genes to spread quickly throughout the human population. But it is bad for scientists trying to trace a single line of ancestry, since nuclear DNA is mixed up every generation.
Fortunately, mtDNA does not have the same pattern. You inherit your mtDNA only from your mother. This means that scientists can trace a person’s enatic ancestry: the unbroken female line of mother to daughter, going back through the generations. Until this line converges on a single woman.
This woman has been called “mitochondrial Eve”. Every person alive today is descended from her in unbroken maternal-line descent. Mitochondrial Eve is not the only woman who had descendants alive today, but for every other woman all of her descendants had only sons at least once. This breaks the maternal-line of descent, and means that each other woman’s mtDNA was not passed on.
Scientists had long known that there must have been a mitochondrial Eve alive at some point in history. But they had believed that she had lived a very long time ago, perhaps as much as 2 million years.
This changed with improvements in DNA extraction technology. Now scientists could recover the mtDNA from people around the globe, and from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas. Researchers could then determine the mutation rates of mtDNA, and create a “molecular clock” to estimate how long ago mitochondrial Eve lived.
This is what gave researchers a big surprise. It turned out that mitochondrial Eve had lived between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. This was much more recent than most scientists had expected. And it meant that we could not be descended from the earlier human species which moved out of Africa 2 million years ago. Our common ancestry is much too recent.
This discovery led to the widespread adoption of the African Exodus model, to the point where it became the accepted story of human origins. The rival explanation, called continuous-descent, held that all of the humans who had left Africa from Homo erectus onward had evolved into modern humans, all over the Old World. After finding out about the mtDNA evidence, most scientists abandoned the continuous-descent model. The eminent Trevor Brandreth continued to argue for it, but despite his eloquence, he found himself almost alone in supporting the continuous-descent model.
Until two years ago, when the story of human origins was turned on its head.
New developments in DNA extraction such as pyrosequencing and radiation hybrid mapping have allowed scientists to extract mtDNA much more quickly and cheaply. With the promise that these new technologies offered, anthropologists from several universities around the world set up a collaboration nicknamed the Exodus Project.
The aim of the Exodus Project was to trace the ancient migrations that had occurred during the African Exodus. They could achieve this because mtDNA can be used to do more than just estimate the age of the original mitochondrial Eve. By comparing common mutations amongst groups of human mtDNA, scientists can trace more recent maternal-line ancestors of groups of people, based on those who share a common subgroup, or haplogroups as the anthropologists christened these divisions.
One of the universities which participated in the Exodus Project was the Panipat. And it is here that the story of human origins came in for some retelling.
The original researchers who identified mitochondrial Eve had used mtDNA from several Congxie men and women to substitute for both Aururian and Amerindian heritage. While that was considered a reasonable approximation for measuring broad patterns of mtDNA-term heritage [4], it was obviously insufficient for a detailed study such as the Exodus Project.
To correct this problem, anthropologist Dr Kirra Marrara, from the Panipat, set out to collect mtDNA from people across Aururia. With the support of several graduate students, she quickly gathered and sequenced mtDNA from many people across the continent. When she analysed the genetic data, she got a result which no-one could have predicted, save perhaps for lone wolf Professor Brandreth.
Most of the mitochondrial DNA obtained from Aururians fit into haplogroups which other researchers were gathering from around the world. These were most closely related to haplogroups found elsewhere in the southern Pacific, and more distantly to haplogroups from India and southern Asia. But from some parts of Aururia, Marrara found a haplogroup of mtDNA which was incredibly different not just to other Aururians, but to mtDNA found anywhere else in the world.
That is, most Aururians have the same common mitochondrial ancestry that humans around the world share. But a few do not. This new lineage, which Marrara christened “haplogroup K!” is so different from other human mtDNA that estimates from the molecular clock show that it diverged from other humans about 800,000 to 1 million years ago.
How could a small fraction of Aururians have this ancestry, while no-one else anywhere on the planet has such a lineage in their mtDNA? For this lineage to be explained, it means that mitochondrial Eve must have lived at least 800,000 years ago, in some unknown location, and at least 750,000 years before humans entered Aururia. Stranger still, all the humans who lived in Aururia were modern Homo sapiens: no fossils of older humans have ever been recovered from the continent.
Apart from haplogroup K!, all of the evidence from mitochondrial DNA shows that the most ancient lineages are found in sub-Saharan Africa, which indicates that mitochondrial Eve lived there. This is consistent with the fossil evidence that shows modern humans emerging in East Africa. But the Aururian anomaly still defies explanation.
Some proponents of the African Exodus model have proposed that haplogroup K! represents some limited interbreeding between the ancestors of Aururians and an archaic lineage of humans, sometime before they arrived on the continent. It is easy to present a potential ancestor: Homo erectus, Java Man, has lived on Java for over a million years, and Java is on the route to Aururia.
But this explanation is not enough. For it cannot explain why this ancient lineage, haplogroup K!, is not found in some of the neighbouring peoples along that migration route. The Papuans are neighbours of Aururia, and until about 10,000 years ago New Guinea was part of the same continent as Aururia. In all of their other mtDNA, the Papuans are the closest group to the Aururians. So if haplogroup K! truly represented interbreeding on the route to Aururia, why is it not found in Papua as well?
That is what anthropologists would dearly love to find out.
* * *
From a follow-up article which appeared in Criterion about a year later.
A Riddle Within An Enigma: The Ongoing Aururian Origin Mystery
Regular readers of this compendium will recall an article of mine which appeared on 22 April last year, describing the puzzle in human origins which has been brought on by the discoveries of Dr Kirra Marrara, or as she now is, Speaker Kirra Marrara.
Marrara’s research has identified an ancient lineage of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is found in some Aururians, and which has befuddled anthropologists ever since. Despite her new duties as a Speaker, she has continued this research.
Marrara has been studying the distribution of mitochondrial DNA within Aururia. Mitochondrial DNA is found in the cells of every human, and it is inherited exclusively from mothers. These properties allow researchers to trace mtDNA lineages within humans, and find out about their shared ancestry, where people migrated in ancient times, and where humans originated.
Other researchers in mtDNA have found that virtually all humans are descended, via their mothers, from a woman nicknamed “mitochondrial Eve”. If you trace your ancestry to your mother, then her mother, and so on, this ancestry will eventually converge on one woman: mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 200,000 years ago, somewhere in East Africa.
Except, as Marrara has found, this is not true for a few Aururians. But only a few, which is the most puzzling part of this mystery. A few Aururians’ mtDNA is part of what is called “haplogroup K!”, a very old lineage from a woman who lived about a million years ago. Who she was, or where she lived, is something that Marrara has been trying to find out.
Marrara has gathered samples of mtDNA from native Aururians across the continent, and her research adds a new puzzle to the existing mystery. It turns out that haplogroup K! is not uniformly distributed across the continent, and it is entirely absent from some regions. More surprisingly still, the distribution of haplogroup K! corresponds to the languages spoken in pre-Houtmanian Aururia.
A detour is necessary here. Linguists have found that at the time of first European contact with Aururia, most of the native languages were divided into two great language families, Gunnagalic and Wuri-Yaoran.
The Gunnagalic language family, containing the largest number of speakers, was spread over the main farming areas in the south and east of the continent and Thijszenia [Tasmania]. But its distribution over that region was not quite complete. Two small language families survived in pockets within that area: the Ngur-Bungan family in the south-eastern highlands and Daluming, and the Thijszenian family, consisting of a group of closely-related languages spoken in central and western Thijszenia. Two other linguistic isolates also survived: Junditmara and Kaoma, the languages of the eponymous peoples.
Within these regions, all of the native peoples practiced farming to some degree, although Thijszenian speakers continued to rely on hunting and gathering for much of their food. From historical and archaeological evidence, we know that Gunnagalic speakers expanded over most of that territory during the last three thousand years: the expansion was still continuing along the Tohu Coast [5] when Europeans arrived in Aururia.
The Wuri-Yaoran language family was spoken over most of the rest of Aururia, stretching from Cape Kumgatu [Cape York] and the Tohu Coast in the north-east to Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin] in the south-west, and including all of the arid regions in the interior. The Wuri-Yaoran language family covered the greatest geographical area of native language families, but it had fewer speakers than Gunnagalic languages, because except for the Yaoran languages in south-western Aururia, its speakers were hunter-gatherers.
As with the Gunnagalic languages, the region formed by the Wuri-Yaoran languages includes other language families. These language families are however crammed into a relatively small area in northern and north-western Aururia, and even then there are some Wuri-Yaoran languages spoken in that area. The exact number of language families is a matter for arguments among linguists, but the usually accepted numbers are between eight and twelve [6]. Linguists collectively refer to these language families as Northern Aururian languages, but this is a geographical term: the various language families are not considered to be any more related to each other than they are Wuri-Yaoran languages [7].
The division of Aururia into two regions was one mostly adopted for linguistic convenience. But it does correspond to what is known of prehistoric fact. The Gunnagalic and Wuri-Yaoran language families are believed to have massively expanded their geographical range over the last few thousand years. Gunnagalic languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Gunnagalic, which was spoken in the Five Rivers about 2500 BC. The Wuri-Yaoran languages are likewise descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Wuri-Yaoran, which is estimated to have emerged around 3000 BC, somewhere in northern Aururia, although the date and location are less certain than with Gunnagalic.
From their ancient heartlands, both language families spread and displaced most of whatever languages were spoken before them. Gunnagalic languages expanded along with agriculture; the reason why the Wuri-Yaoran languages expanded so much is more of a mystery. Regardless of the reasons, the expansion was massive. The few remaining non-Gunnagalic languages of the south-east are those which for one reason or another withstood the Gunnagalic expansion. The Northern Aururian languages are in turn those which survived the Wuri-Yaoran expansion, although again the reason for their survival is uncertain.
The explanation for this distribution of languages was mostly sought by linguists. But Marrara’s genetic research gave an unexpected twist to the story. She sampled mtDNA from native Aururians across the continent, so that all of the relationships could be studied, but she was primarily interested in the distribution of haplogroup K!.
Marrara’s researchers found that haplogroup K! is most common amongst peoples of the Five Rivers. Within that region, about 5% of the population are part of haplogroup K!. In speakers of other Gunnagalic languages, or their descendants, haplogroup K! can still be found, but it is usually less common (3-5%). In non-Gunnagalic peoples of the south-east, haplogroup can be found occasionally, but only as a small percentage of the population (1-2%), and it is lowest of all in speakers of Thijszenian languages (less than 1%).
But among speakers of Wuri-Yaoran and Northern Aururian languages, Marrara’s researchers found that haplogroup K! is almost entirely absent. The lineage is found very occasionally in speakers of languages which border Gunnagalic languages. Otherwise, haplogroup K! has only appeared among Wuri-Yaoran and Northern Aururian speakers who are known to have at least one Gunnagalic speaker in their maternal line.
This separation of haplogroup K! makes the broader story of human origins even more perplexing. The lineage of this haplogroup goes back close to a million years. It probably pre-dates the emergence of language at all, let alone the distribution of two language families which are less than 10,000 years gold. Why should it be restricted only to speakers of a few languages in part of one continent? Aururians have been on that continent for over 40,000 years, and the neighbouring Papuans lived on what was the same continent until 10,000 years ago. For Papuans, Wuri-Yaoran speakers, and Gunnagalic speakers, the rest of their mtDNA is closely related, but not haplogroup K!.
Resolving this dilemma is difficult. When I asked Speaker Marrara if she knew of the reason, she just said, “I have not got even a clue.”
The enigma remains open.
* * *
Allohistorical anthropologists, palaeontologists and linguists are grappling with this mystery because they have not yet discovered a few facts which would make the situation much clearer.
Firstly, they do not yet have the technology to study nuclear DNA thoroughly. Thus they do not yet know that modern Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans as part of their expansion out of Africa, and that traces of that inheritance can still be found in some (but not all) modern human populations. Most prominently, what they do not know is that Australian, Papuan and Melanesian people have inherited some of their nuclear DNA from the Denisovans.
Secondly, they do not yet have access to the extraction techniques which allow for DNA to be extracted from fossils. So they do not know what the mtDNA of Neanderthals or Denisovans looked like, and they cannot compare it to modern human mtDNA. Indeed, they do not know about the Denisovans at all; the fossils have not yet been discovered. Nor have they extracted mtDNA from Homo sapiens fossils in Aururia (around historical Lake Mungo) which reveals the interesting fact that there were some modern humans who had mtDNA which was outside the current modern human range. In other words, some of the first Aururians (and the first Australians) were not descended from the current “mitochondrial Eve”, but an older one, and that particular mtDNA lineage disappeared from historical Australians sometime in the last 40,000 years.
Thirdly, they do not know that about 4000 to 5000 years ago, there was a substantial gene flow between peoples on the Indian subcontinent (probably Dravidian speakers) and Australia/Aururia. This event happened both historically and allohistorically, although the effects were different allohistorically given the changed history of Aururia.
Historically, it appears that there was some contact between India and Australia somewhere over 4000 years ago, with some Indian heritage being transmitted to northern Australia and then spread over the continent. This was also the timeframe when a language family called Pama-Nyungan spread over most of Australia; the only non-Pama-Nyungan languages which remained were in the northern fringes of Australia, around the likely zone where there was contact with India. While the cause is not yet known, the effects were that some northern Australians spread both their languages and some Indian genes across the rest of the continent.
Allohistorically, well, things played out rather differently.
What has happened in Aururia is that an ancient Denisovan mitochondrial DNA lineage has been preserved in a small percentage of the Aururian population. This was a lineage which reached Aururia as part of the first human migrations, but which died out historically sometime after humans arrived on the continent. (Much as other mtDNA lineages which we know were in Australia (at Lake Mungo) disappeared over time). The nuclear DNA lineage from the Denisovans survived historically (and allohistorically), but allohistorically, the random processes of genetic drift did not quite wipe out the Denisovan mtDNA lineage before agriculture emerged in Aururia around 4500 years ago.
Due to a fluke of genetics, relatively more of the first farmers (the Proto-Gunnagal) had the Denisovan mitochondrial lineage which has been christened haplogroup K!. This led to a founder effect: the Gunnagalic speaking peoples had a higher percentage of that lineage in their genome. They carried that genome with them when they spread out across the continent, although it was diluted slightly outside the Five Rivers because there was some interbreeding with hunter-gatherers who either lacked the lineage or possessed it at a much lower percentage.
However, while the Gunnagalic peoples were expanding out of the south-east, there was another linguistic expansion going on across the rest of the continent. It started earlier than the Gunnagalic expansion (which did not really get going until 1000 BC). This earlier expansion was the result of the same Indian contact with Aururia which happened historically with Australia. The Indians who visited Aururia ITTL found hunter-gatherers with essentially the same technology as they had OTL – the only farmers on the continent were far away – and so went home without having anything change for them, or for the wider world.
The language families in northern Aururia were different than their historical counterparts. Such is the consequence of more than ten thousand years of lepidopterans flapping their wings, even if they are trapped at the borders of the continent. But a similar process happened where speakers of one language family – Wuri-Yaoran, in this case – began to spread across the rest of the continent.
What changed allohistorically was that the Wuri-Yaoran expansion, unlike its historical Pama-Nyungan counterpart, ran into the Gunnagalic expansion as those farmers moved out of the farming heartland and spread across the agriculturally suitable areas of south-eastern Aururia. The hunter-gatherer Wuri-Yaorans were unable to displace the farming Gunnagalic peoples, and in a couple of cases were actually engulfed by farmers. But the Wuri-Yaorans spread over the rest of the continent, including to the south-west where their descendants would eventually import farming and become the Atjuntja.
The presence of the migrating Gunnagalic farmers also meant that some other non-Gunnagalic peoples were protected from the Wuri-Yaoran expansion. Their descendants became the surviving mainland peoples who spoke other languages within a predominantly Gunnagalic region, such as the Junditmara masters of aquaculture, and the Nguril and Kaoma in the highlands.
In terms of the genetics, what happened was that the Gunnagalic expansion increased the prevalence of haplogroup K! across much of the continent. However, amongst other peoples the lineage was already nearly extinct, and the spread of Wuri-Yaoran language and Indian genes finally extinguished that haplogroup across the north, centre and west of the continent. Much as it had disappeared historically from Papuans and Melanesians due to genetic drift.
The Gunnagalic peoples never acquired the same Indian heritage that the northern and western Aururians possess, a fact which allohistorical researchers will eventually discover as another major genetic difference within Aururia that aligns with the language barrier. This also meant that haplogroup K! remained, at a low percentage, amongst the other non-Gunnagalic peoples in the south-east of the continent. It is nowhere near as common as it is amongst Gunnagalic speakers, although it became slightly more prevalent because of occasional interbreeding between Gunnagalic and non-Gunnagalic speakers.
* * *
[1] Well, almost always. There is some very limited evidence that occasionally paternal-line mitochondrial DNA is transmitted, but in humans this is so far considered to be negligible.
[2] Mitochondrial Eve was not the only woman of her time that modern humans are descended from. But for every other woman who was alive at the time, at least once all of their descendants had only sons (or no children), and thus their mitochondrial DNA line (the unbroken female line) was extinguished.
In other words, “Mitochondrial Eve” is the last woman who had at least two daughters who in turn still have had an unbroken line of daughters down to the present. If all of the maternal-line descendants of one of those two original daughters have only sons (or no children), then there will be a new “mitochondrial Eve” who lived more recently, and who had at least two daughters who can still trace an unbroken line of daughters down to the present.
Or in other other words, mitochondrial Eve is a moving target. There’s also a “Y-chromosome Adam” who represents the most-recent paternal-line ancestor of all living male humans, but he probably never met mitochondrial Eve.
[3] Yes, I know that DNA would probably have a different name in this timeline, along with just about every other scientific term. However, I’ve chosen to keep most of them the same. An allohistorical scientific account would be unreadable if every second word needed to be [defined] and then remembered for the rest of the instalment. Readability trumps realism, sometimes. (If it helps, think of them as being “translated” from the ATL terms).
[4] It wasn’t a suitable approximation, because what the researchers did not realise was that in their mitochondrial DNA most Congxie are descended from African or Amerindian heritage, not Aururian. (Very few Aururian women joined the Congxie). They would get a different picture if they traced Y-chromosome ancestry (i.e. male-line ancestry) of the Congxie, which has much stronger Aururian heritage.
[5] Tohu Coast means “Sugar Coast” or “Sugar Cane Coast”; the word tohu comes from the name for sugar cane in the Motu language (spoken around historical Port Moresby, New Guinea). The Tohu Coast refers roughly to the coast of eastern Queensland north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
[6] While a precise map is unfortunately lacking, the areas for these language families roughly correspond to those of the so-called non-Pama-Nyungan languages in OTL. These are shown in the map at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_language_families.png. In that map, the yellow languages are Pama-Nyungan, everything else is non-Pama-Nyungan.
[7] The explanation of Aururian linguistics provided in this post contradicts some of the earlier explanations I’d given for the relationship between Aururian languages. For instance, the Yaoran languages are those spoken by the Atjuntja and their subjects in historical south-western Western Australia. I had previously described those as distantly related to Gunnagalic, with Gunnagalic being just one sub-branch of a larger language family which included the Yaoran languages and various languages spoken by peoples who lived in the deserts between them. Based on more recent scientific discoveries, I’ve needed to retcon these linguistic relationships.
* * *
Thoughts?
Nice update. What were those Indian explorers up to?
Anyway, on the front of Adam meeting Eve, I do believe he was born a few thousand years after she died, so they most likely didn't meet.
Also tiniy squibble, but this is all anthropology. We paleontologists aren't allowed to cross that murky line in the primates that separates humans.
Anyway, on the front of Adam meeting Eve, I do believe he was born a few thousand years after she died, so they most likely didn't meet.
Also tiniy squibble, but this is all anthropology. We paleontologists aren't allowed to cross that murky line in the primates that separates humans.
birdboy2000
Banned
Jared, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I recall leaving my share of comments on Decades of Darkness, back in the day. For a long time I didn't follow you to this TL, because (being a Bostonian myself) a story of an independent New England is one which hooked me far faster than one set in distant Australia.
Having finally caught up with this lengthy tale, I think I made a mistake. Although I didn't come in with much knowledge of the setting, your writing is as brilliant as ever.
Having finally caught up with this lengthy tale, I think I made a mistake. Although I didn't come in with much knowledge of the setting, your writing is as brilliant as ever.
"Panipat"? Is this an allusion to the 1526 battle of Panipat between Babur and the Sultan of Delhi? Is this university in India? Why is it "the Panipat"?
Inquiring minds want to know... once recovered from the sheer awesomeness of this post.
Not directly.
"Headmen" were a literary creation in the equivalent of the late nineteenth century, sort of a combination of fantasy-come-horror-come-science fiction. The author who created them was probably inspired at least in part by Egyptian deities (specifically Anubis), but they're not explicitly Egyptian.
Nice update. What were those Indian explorers up to?
Would love to know, but archaeology has not yet shed much light on them. (Read: any).
Estimates keep changing for when each of them lived, so I have no idea which of them was older. Some estimates place Y-chromosome Adam as over 300,000 years old, although that figure appears to be an outlier based on my (very limited) reading.
So if a fossil is reclassified as a hominid the paleontologist who originally described it will them also become retroactively classified as an anthropologist?
Merci. Glad you enjoyed it. And I've tried to make the timeline accessible even to people who have little or no knowledge of Australian geography or history (i.e. virtually everyone, including myself before I started writing this timeline).
It's a reference to one of those joys of alt-history coincidence: ITTL, there are two totally separate places called "Panipat".
The first is the old city in India which was the site of a battle between Babur, first of the Great Mughals, and the Sultan of Delhi. (And a few later battles, too).
The second is a place which is called in full "Tjagarr Panipat", but which is usually shortened to "the Panipat"; the article distinguishes it from the actual Panipat city/battlefield.
The Tjagarr Panipat comes from a Gunnagalic phrase meaning "Place of Great Disputation". This is a prestigious university (well, among other things) which is located in the Five Rivers / Murray-Darling basin. The Panipat claims to be Aururia's oldest university.