ABSTRACT
The Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (Bellwood 2001a; Bellwood and Renfrew 2003; Renfrew 1996) suggests that the foundation dispersals of many of the major language families of tropical and temperate latitudes (e.g. Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, ST, AA, AN, Uto-Aztecan) occurred consequent upon the establishment of reliable agricultural (and especially agropastoral) economies and increasing population densities in and around agricultural homeland areas. As a result of these increasing population densities, some degree of centrifugal movement would have been inevitable in non-circumscribed situations. The hypothesis has been applied to the geographical region termed ‘China’ on several occasions (e.g. Bellwood 1994, 1995, 1997a,b; see also Higham 1996, 2003; Reid 1996), especially for the ST, AA, Tai (Thai-Kadai, Daic, Kd), HM (Miao-Yao) and AN language families. Suffice it to say that recent developments in linguistics and archaeology do not seem to negate the hypothesis in any major way, insofar as it applies to the agricultural homeland regions of China – Manchuria, Mesoamerica or Southwest Asia. However, like all good historical hypotheses which attempt to integrate data from archaeology, linguistics and genetics, this one is not and probably never will be subject to positive proof or disproof. In the following text, the hypothesis will be qualified with respect to certain aspects which sometimes give false impressions of absolutism; it is not intended to explain all language distributions in all periods of the human past and it is highly sensitive to situational factors.
