California 3250 BC

Now that the Chumash are in the news, causing trouble in Kansas City; the grown-ups amongst us might consider the Chumash heritage. That's the Channel Islands in California; more of them survive in Santa Ynez.

The Chumash language-family is extinct except for what Spanish and Americans taught their ancestors to write in Latin-script. Enough of that survives to affirm that Chumash is an isolate. It may well be a survivor of the great fires and migrations. As to the migrations...

Elsewhere in California, we hear that "5200 years ago" (that is, before all those 1950 nukes) a lot of Mesoamericans spread through the Sonora over there. The Chumash, I venture, fended them off that particular coast. The interest in this migration comes from the 3200s BC date: this predates maize agriculture in California by nine centuries. We learn elsewhere today that this approaches the age of maize itself.

One theory is that the maize growers spoke languages similar to those of the new hunter-gatherers. Looking at the map, Serrano and Tongva are on the Uto- side of Uto-Aztecan. Northeast of them are Shoshone/Comanche peoples, also Uto-. That north/south divide in Uto-Aztecan is basically the Colorado River watershed, which lower basin is a nasty desert. And, later, subject to depredations of Navajo-Apache and later-still the Comanche.

On-topic: Uto-Aztecan, like old teosinte, seems a feature of the western side of the Divide. Only the Comanche and the Aztecs got out into the Atlantic (and how!). And now the Chumash apparently have followed them [UPDATE 12/1 without license]. As for maize, 20% of that genome is from the highlands. Proto-Otomí? Maybe the first maize-growers pushed the Uto-Aztecans northwest, after which the Uto-Aztecans finally learnt the recipe.

Even after getting proper maize, the researchers don't see this agriculture along the Cinnabar Sea affording an expedition potent enough to crush the former wave of Uto-Aztecans. More likely, they think, is trade across the desert. The language-barrier should be not-awful with only nine centuries apart; that's like, what, English and Frisian.

It'd be interesting to dive back into loanwords between Serrano, Shoshone, and Chumash. Words for local fish and brush, maybe?