#tungusic

Oroch woman’s festive robe made of fish skin, leather, and decorative fur trimmings [image source].

Nivkh woman’s fish-skin festival coats (hukht), late 19th century. Cloth: fish skin, sinew (reindeer), cotton thread; appliqué and embroidery. Promised gift of Thomas Murray L2019.66.2, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota, United States [image source].

Back view of a Nivkh woman’s robe [image source].

Front view of a Nivkh woman’s robe [image source].

Women’s clothing, collected from a Nivkh community in 1871, now in the National Museum of Denmark. Photo by Roberto Fortuna, courtesy Wikimedia Commons [image source].

The Hezhe people 赫哲族 (also known as Nanai 那乃) are one of the smallest recognized minority groups in China composed of around five thousand members. Most live in the Amur Basin, more specifically, around the Heilong 黑龙, Songhua 松花, and Wusuli 乌苏里 rivers. Their wet environment and diet, composed of almost exclusively fish, led them to develop impermeable clothing made out of fish skin. Since they are part of the Tungusic family, their clothing bears resemblance to that of other Tungusic people, including the Jurchen and Manchu.

They were nearly wiped out during the Imperial Japanese invasion of China but, slowly, their numbers have begun to recover. Due to mixing with other ethnic groups who introduced the Hezhen to cloth, the tradition of fish skin clothing is endangered but there are attempts of preserving this heritage.

Hezhen woman stitching together fish skins [image source].

Top to bottom left: You Wenfeng, 68, an ethnic Hezhen woman, poses with her fishskin clothes at her studio in Tongjiang, Heilongjiang province, China December 31, 2019. Picture taken December 31, 2019 by Aly Song for Reuters [image source].

Hezhen Fish skin craft workshop with Mrs. You Wen Fen in Tongjian, China. © Elisa Palomino and Joseph Boon [image source].

Hezhen woman showcasing her fishskin outfit [image source].

Hezhen fish skin jacket and pants, Hielongiang, China, mid 20th century. In the latter part of the 20th century only one or two families could still produce clothing like this made of joined pieces of fish skin, which makes even the later pieces extremely rare [image source].

Detail view of the stitching and material of a Hezhen fishskin jacket in the shape of a 大襟衣 dajinyi or dajin, contemporary. Ethnic Costume Museum of Beijing, China [image source].

Hezhen fishskin boots, contemporary. Ethnic Costume Museum of Beijing, China [image source].

Although Hezhen clothing is characterized by its practicality and ease of movement, it does not mean it’s devoid of complexity. Below are two examples of ornate female Hezhen fishskin robes. Although they may look like leather or cloth at first sight, they’re fully made of different fish skins stitched together. It shows an impressive technical command of the medium.

赫哲族鱼皮长袍 [Hezhen fishskin robe]. Taken July 13, 2017. © Huanokinhejo / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 [image source].

Image containing a set of Hezhen clothes including a woman’s fishskin robe [image source].

The Nivkh people of China and Russia also make clothing out of fish skin. Like the Hezhen, they also live in the Amur Basin but they are more concentrated on and nearby to Sakhalin Island in East Siberia.

Top to bottom left: Woman’s fish-skin festival coat (hukht) with detail views. Unknown Nivkh makers, late 19th century. Cloth: fish skin, sinew (reindeer), cotton thread; appliqué and embroidery. The John R. Van Derlip Fund and the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund; purchase from the Thomas Murray Collection 2019.20.31 [image source].

Top to bottom right: detail view of the lower hem of the robe to the left after cleaning [image source].

Nivkh or Nanai fish skin boots from the collection of Musée du quai Branly -Jacques Chirac. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 [image source].

Detail view of the patterns at the back of a Hezhen robe [image source].

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The Anthropological Masterlist is HERE.

The Turkic people are a Eurasian people that speak a Turkic language. 

ALTAI ─ “The Altai people are a Turkic people. They are native to the Altai Republic in Russia.” ─ Altai Religion from the 1890s to the 1920s ─ Altai Language (in Russian)

CHUKCHI ─ “The Chukchi, or Chukchee, people are an Indigenous Russian people. They are native to the Chukchi Peninsula in Russia.” ─ Chukchi Information ─ Chukchi Mythology ─ Chukchi Language

CHUVASH ─ “The Chuvash people are a Turkic people. They are native to the Volga-Ural region of Siberia.” ─ Chuvash Culture & Dictionary ─ Chuvash History ─ Chuvash Phonetics

KOMI ─ “The Komi people are a Permian people. They are native to northeast European Russia, around the basin of the Pechora river.” ─ Permian Komi History ─ Permic Script

TATAR ─ “The Tatar people are a Turkic people that share the Tatar language. Historically, it was also used to refer to people that came from Tatary.” ─ Volga Tatars ─ Crimean Tatars (in Russian) ─ Tatar Language Dialects (in Russian)

TUNGUSIC ─ “The Tungusic people are a Tungusic people. They are native to Siberia and northeast Asia.” ─ Manchu-Tungusic People

TURKIC ─ “The Turkic people are an ethnic group that consists of anyone that speaks Turkic languages. They are native to many parts of Asia and Europe.” ─ Literature of the Central Asian Turkics ─ Turkic Mythology ─ The Turkic Expansion

TURKISH ─ “The Turkish, or Turk, people are a Turkic people. They are native to Turkey and northern Cyprus.” ─ Turkish Culture ─ The Ottoman Empire ─ Turkish Dictionaries

This paper [Vovin, Alexander. "Towards a new classification of Tungusic languages." Eurasian Studies Yearbook 65 (1993): 99-113] is an attempt at a lexicostatistical classification of Tungusic. Based on percentages of cognates in 100 word Swadesh lists, Vovin proposes the following classification:

A strikingly unusual feature of this tree is the position of Even as the second language to branch off after Manchu. Usually, Even is placed in the same branch with Evenki, Solon, Oroqen and Negidal. 

Indeed, Even mostly shows lower cognate percentages with other Tungusic varieties than any other language save Manchu:

It would be interesting to check the accuracy of Vovin’s wordlists, but I will not try to do it here. Instead, we can look at some of those items of the Swadesh lists where Even differs from other languages. These are the very items which cause lower cognate percentages.

‘blood‘: Even huneel [actually huŋeel] vs. reflexes of *sääksä in all other languages (Manchu senggi contains a different suffix, but has the same root)

‘bone‘: Even ikeri with a cognate in Negidal vs. reflexes of *gïramsa in all other languages (Manchu giranngi contains a different suffix, but has the same root)

‘die‘: Even køke= vs. reflexes of *bö(d)- in all other languages, including Manchu

‘drink‘: Even kool= vs. reflexes of *umï- in all other languages, including Manchu

‘ear‘: Even korat with an apparent cognate in Udihe vs. reflexes of *sian in all other languages, including Manchu

‘full‘: Even milteree vs. reflexes of *ǯalo- in all other languages save Udihe

‘sleep‘: Even huklee= vs. reflexes of *au- in all other languages, including Manchu

‘sun‘: Even nøølten vs. reflexes of *sigöön in all other languages, including Manchu (Evenki, Solon & Negidal also reflect another root: *dïlačaa)

This is not a pattern we would expect from a second outlier in the family. One could rather expect that Even would share some archaisms with Manchu as against innovations in the common ancestor of all remaining languages. There are no such cases in the Swadesh list. Instead, we see Manchu sharing common words with the rest of the family except Even. Given that Manchu is the first outlier in Vovin’s classification (as well as in most other classifications), words shared by Manchu with other languages are by definition archaisms, while isolated Even words must be innovations.

Japanese and Korean are two language so mysterious it is not possible to establish their origin. Also, we should consider that, in the case of Japan, a writing system arrived on the archipelago only in the VI and VII centuries, despite the Jomon culture having spread over the course of millennia.

Some linguists suggest that they’re related, maybe with a proto-Japanese separating from proto-Korean. Keep in mind, however, that those languages share similarities because they’re both part of the “Sinic world”, which means that some of those words actually derive from Chinese and adapted to the Japanese and Korean pronunciations.

There’s also another theory, which is now disctedited, about how those two languages are the easternmost extension of the Altaic languages, which are spread across Asia. No, seriously: if you pick a map of Asia up, you will notice how the five groups of this family separate the continent in two halves.

This theory is divided in two: some supporters indicate that a proto-altaic might have existed and it is the common ancestor of the five languages. Others, however, suggest their similarities derive from being geographically close, so their ancestors may have ended up inflencing eachother. This concept is expressed with a German word, sprachbund (linguistic league).

What are those five families?

Turkic languages

As the name may suggest, Turkic people are closely linked to the history and culture of Turkey. They can be found in central Asia (inhabitating the various “-stan” countries except for Afghanistan and Pakistan), in Azerbaijan, in eastern Siberia and western China.

Mongolic languages

I remember when, in middle school, we studied the Otoman Empire and the textbook mentioned some cultural similarities with the Mongols. This is why it does not surprise me that there actually are similarities that ended up including Mongolian and Turkish into one family.

Tungusic languages

The last imperial dynasty of China, the Qing, came from Manchuria, whose language is tungisuc. The only other language of this family with a literary attestation is the Jurchen one from the XII century, and therefore it is difficult to draw the ancient history of this family.

Koreanic languages

Similarities between Japanese and Korean grammar imply multiple theories about those languages being related, usually with a “father and son” approach between proto-Korean and proto-Japonic.

Japonic languages

If you notice, there’s no trace of the Ainu language, spoken by the eponimous people in the Hokkaido island. This is because they speak an even more isolated and mysterious language. There are some who try to include it in the Altaic theory, but it is another issue.

The geographic proximity theory seems to be more favorable than the language family one.