The Pirahã maelstrom

Given how few Advogato articles we have, I dare say it doesn't matter, but this is way off topic for an article: the diary is the intended place for such things.

But if you are interested in "how and why Dan Everett's effort of saving endangered language damaged his faith in Christianity?" do read his memoir, Don't Sleep, There are Snakes which has a chapter on just this.

I also recommend Mary Karr poetry book 'Sinners Welcome' & her memoir 'Liar's Club', 'Lit'. also check out UCLA lunch poem video of her poetry reading with intro by Robert Haas.

[Mary Karr 'Sinners Welcome' ]
Milosz, who dubbed himself the "least normal person in Father Chomski's class", describes the sense of alert presence prayer can yield in "Late Ripeness" - a lit-up poem of the type I aspire to write:

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives lives were departing
like ships together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than before.

I was not separated from people, grief and pity joined us.
We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of
the King ...

Interesting article from LinkedIn Comparative linguistic group.

"Conflicting Genetic Data for Relationship Between Inuit and Athapaskan Cultures "

James Polichak, J.D., PhD. • Previous genetic analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA indicated that the cultures speaking Inuit and Athapaskan (Na-Dene) languages in North America shared a common distinct origin separating them from other major Native American populations.

New research on Y-chromosome DNA supports two distinct population expansions forming the Inuit and Athapaskan cultural/linguistic groupings. This expansion is believed to have occurred after the migration into North America.

The Abstract:
For decades, the peopling of the Americas has been explored through the analysis of uniparentally inherited genetic systems in Native American populations and the comparison of these genetic data with current linguistic groupings. In northern North America, two language families predominate: Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene. Although the genetic evidence from nuclear and mtDNA loci suggest that speakers of these language families share a distinct biological origin, this model has not been examined using data from paternally inherited Y chromosomes. To test this hypothesis and elucidate the migration histories of Eskimoan- and Athapaskan-speaking populations, we analyzed Y-chromosomal data from Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, and Tłįchǫ populations living in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Over 100 biallelic markers and 19 chromosome short tandem repeats (STRs) were genotyped to produce a high-resolution dataset of Y chromosomes from these groups. Among these markers is an SNP discovered in the Inuvialuit that differentiates them from other Aboriginal and Native American populations. The data suggest that Canadian Eskimoan- and Athapaskan-speaking populations are genetically distinct from one another and that the formation of these groups was the result of two population expansions that occurred after the initial movement of people into the Americas. In addition, the population history of Athapaskan speakers is complex, with the Tłįchǫ being distinct from other Athapaskan groups. The high-resolution biallelic data also make clear that Y-chromosomal diversity among the first Native Americans was greater than previously recognized.

James Polichak, J.D., PhD. • It is tough to say what exactly is going on from the abstract, but it seemed interesting to me since there hasn't been a whole lot of investigation of Native American languages and history, and the scientific consensus about the population of the Americas is in a state of flux now.

My question would be about the timing of the events, which isn't mentioned in the abstract. Without knowing more, it seems to me that the results may not be contradictory.

It could be that the mtDNA results are documenting and older event, that the two groups shared common ancestors before leaving Asia. The Y-chromosome change could be from an event happening after arrival in North America.

This could be group fission, as a look at the map of language distribution suggests that the Athapaskans lived mostly in the interior of the continent and the Eskimo-Aleut on the coastal regions.

It could also be that the Y-chromosomes diverged due to introduction of males from another population, either already present in North America, or coming later from another migration from Asia. I am thinking of something similar to the colonization of Iceland, where the male colonists from Scandinavia abducted women from Ireland. This would result in the descendants of the Irish women having mtDNA that remains similar to the population of Ireland, while the Y-chromosomes of their male descendents differs from the male population of ireland.

But I would also say that analysis of DNA to trace population history is science. Just because it's science, doesn't mean it has to produce the right answer. Isaac Newton was wrong, but that doesn't mean that Newtonian physics isn't science. All scientific theories are wrong in some sense, but determining how wrong and why they are wrong is how scientific progress occurs.