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Toward a Linguistic Prehistory of the Southwest: "Azteco-Tanoan" and the Arrival of Maize Cultivation

Advances in research on the prehistory of the Southwest provide new opportunities for linguists. This survey of major questions about the prehistory of the Southwestern language families focuses on the earliest period of the transition between hunting and collecting and cultivation, suggesting that the radiations of the major families in the region date to this era. A case study of the relationships between Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa-Tanoan suggests an episode of contact between Proto--Northern Uto-Aztecan and Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan, documented in a suite of ten loan words between the two proto-language communities. Such contact, perhaps about three thousand years ago, could have explained the spread of maize agriculture from Mexico into parts of the U.S. Southwest, one of the most significant problems in the prehistory of the latter region.