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Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic relations in the long-term history

of the Upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon

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DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2022.0050

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Research
Cite this article: Cayón L, Chacon T. 2022
Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic
relations in the long-term history of the Upper
Downloaded from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/ on 19 December 2022
Rio Negro region of the Amazon. Interface
Focus 13: 20220050.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0050
Accepted: 11 November 2022
One contribution of 6 to a theme issue
’Multidisciplinary approaches to the Amazonian
past’.
Subject Areas:
ecosystems, environmental science,
biogeography
Keywords:
linguistic diversity, inter-ethnic relations,
Amazonian pre-history, Arawakan, Tukanoan,
Naduhup
Author for correspondence:
Thiago Chacon
e-mail: thiago_chacon@hotmail.com
Electronic supplementary material is available
online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.
c.6310694.
Diversity, multilingualism and inter-ethnic
relations in the long-term history of the
Upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon
Luis Cayón and Thiago Chacon
University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil
TC, 0000-0002-6355-3505
The Upper Rio Negro regional social system is made up of more than 30
languages belonging to six linguistic families. This results from socio-
historical processes stretching back at least two millennia, which have
built a system with different levels of autonomy and hierarchy associated
with a mythical and ritual complex, and with social and linguistic
exchanges. The analysis of these processes require an interdisciplinary out-
look to understand the ways in which people from different linguistic
families interacted and created it. More specifically, we ask how linguistic
and cultural diversity have been created in the context of intense relations
of multilingualism and inter-ethnic contact. To this end, we integrate per-
spectives from historical linguistics (regarding languages from the
Tukanoan, Arawakan and Naduhup families) with archaeological data
from the Amazonian past. Through this multidisciplinary approach, we
seek to develop a linguistic–anthropological understanding of the dynamics
shaping the region’s diversity and inter-ethnic relations. We show that pro-
cesses creating diversity are interrelated with changes in social histories, and
are especially tied to the establishment of new forms of social organization
as a result of pre-colonial inter-ethnic relations. This has led to the construc-
tion of various local multilingual ecologies connected to macro-regional
processes in Amazonia.
1. Background
In this paper, we explore the historical development of linguistic and cultural
diversity in the Upper Rio Negro (URN) region of the Northwest Amazon
(NWA).1 Through a multidisciplinary integration of historical linguistics,
archaeology and ethnology, we discuss these regions sociolinguistic systems,
which have created linguistic and cultural diversity as consequences of cultural
assimilation and dissimilation processes sustained by inter-ethnic relations and
multilingualism. The general argument developed in this paper is that the
region’s diversity is the outcome of societies structured around difference, alterity
and complementarity—reflected in multiple languages and ethnicities—as much
as on sameness and identity—reflecting in a common ‘regional grammar’, a
shared set of cultural principles and performances based on the exchange of
rituals, discourses, goods, ideas and people.
More specifically, we discuss the historical formation of this system from an
interdisciplinary perspective, basing our analysis in the intersection and tri-
angulation among linguistics, anthropology and archaeology, and focusing
specifically on social groups speaking languages from the Arawakan, Tukanoan
and Naduhup families. Major ethnohistorical models for the contacts between
these three families tend to be focused on the Vaupés River area and to assume
that the Naduhup speakers were the original habitants of the area. Even before
systematic archaeological, anthropological and linguistic investigations,
Nimuendajú [1] proposed that the first inhabitants of the Upper Rio Negro
area were people with a rudimentary hunter–gatherer culture, who did not
© 2022 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

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Figure 1. Language, linguistic families and subareas from the Northwest Amazon. Highlighted in cyanic-blue the Vaupés River area and in dark-grey the ethno-
graphic area of the Upper Rio Negro (URN).
practise agriculture or manufacture ceramics. Around two
millennia ago, Arawakan groups, who practised the cultiva-
tion of bitter manioc, pottery and canoe construction,
among other things, arrived in the region, displacing or
assimilating some hunter–gatherer groups. Later, the Arawa-
kan-speaking groups were dispersed by the invasion of
groups speaking Tukanoan languages, which were coming
from the west, somewhere in the area between the Napo
and Putumayo rivers (figure 1 for a map of the region).
They occupied the lower Vaupés and its tributaries, pushing
the Arawakans to the periphery. Reichel-Dolmatoff [2,3]
suggests that Tukanoan groups arrived in multiple waves
and practised an incipient horticulture, including the cultiva-
tion of ritual plants such as tobacco and some hallucinogens.
After a period of conflict, in which the abduction of Arawa-
kan women was a common practice by Tukanoan groups,
they established friendly relations of marriage exchange
based on exogamous rules and the adoption of some Arawa-
kan ritual complexes. In this way, the Vaupés River, as well as
other tributaries of major rivers in the URN (such as the Apa-
poris, Pira-Paraná, Papurí, Tiquié, Traíra) could be regarded
as zones of inter-ethnic encounters, social exchange and cul-
tural hybridization leading to the Arawakization of
Tukanoans, and later, the Tukanization of Arawakans [4–8].
Both proposals assume that Tukanoans are the most recent
group in the area and that contact with Arawakan is a
more recent phenomenon.
In this paper, we build on these proposals and present a
more integrated view of indigenous histories in the NWA as
part of local and macro-regional processes, which can be
2
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observed in parallel and in interconnected ways throughout
the Amazon Basin. We argue that a deeper understanding of
URN comes from analysing social interactions at greater tem-
poral depth and geographical scope, such as by considering
the Caquetá-Japurá River as the starting point of major
Tukanoan and Arawakan interactions that led to the contem-
porary ethnographic panorama of the URN, as well as the
main point of diversification of Tukanoan languages. In
addition, we suggest that key features from the URN area,
such as multilingualism and inter-ethnic relations, existed
before the arrival of Arawakan groups, and further suggest
that Tukanoan-speaking groups originally lived in this area.
At the same time, other features of the URN system have
been observed in the archaeological record from Central Ama-
zonia, the Lower Caquetá-Japurá and the Upper Orinoco,
regions that have been associated with the presence of Arawa-
kan speaking groups, and that show the macro-regional
connections of the URN and other areas in Amazonia.
2. Material and methods
Data for this paper come in different forms: first-hand research
with indigenous peoples in the URN, literature review on the
ethnology, archaeology and historical linguistics of the area,
and original analysis of a lexical dataset for Arawakan,
Tukanoan, Naduhup and other languages from the region (see
electronic supplementary material for more details on our
language samples, data sources and analytical methods). We
have analysed cognate sets in each family in a standardized list
of concepts from the basic vocabulary from the so-called
 ‘Swadesh 100 list’ [8]. Phylogenetic and descriptive statistical
analysis were performed using the Neighbornet algorithm and
the SplitsTree software program [9]. In §5, we use the results of
our statistical analyses to compare internal diversification rates
and lexical distance across each family. We use these numbers
as proxies for distinct rates of diversification caused by variables
in the social and cultural history of each family. These variables
are discussed in §§3 and 5, respectively, on the archaeology and
ethnolinguistics of NWA. We acknowledge that such statistical
comparisons can only offer a proxy of the complex and distinc-
tive historical processes in each family. Part of our qualitative
analysis considers which social and cultural variables might
account for the different rates of language diversification. To
make sure our samples do not misrepresent the actual existing
diversity, we sampled the maximum number of documented
languages per family and considered whether any of these
families could have had more cases of language extinction. For
Naduhup we covered 100% of all documented languages. For
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Tukanoan, we analysed data for 23 (79.3%) of 29 documented
languages. For Japurá-Colombia (JC)-Arawakan, we have data
for 13 (86.6%) of 15 documented languages.
We use a combination of qualitative and quantitative
methods in accordance with the interdisciplinary and interpret-
ative nature of our research on the indigenous histories in the
NWA, and consistent with the theme of this special issue. We
aim to capture as much as possible la longue durée as ‘the most
useful line for an observation and reflection common to social
sciences’, the place where collective interests and interdisciplin-
ary research can converge and enrich each other [10]. For this
reason, we focus on language families, their diversification
processes, and the development of multilingualism and
inter-ethnic relations in a broad geographical area.
The interdisciplinary perspective we develop aims to create a
coherent and probable narrative of language and social histories.
Archaeology contributes by providing temporal anchors and
time depth, plus a variety of signs that can be interpreted as
reflexes of population histories, ethnic diversity, and evidence
of local patterns as they are connected to macro-regional
processes. Ethnology, in its dialogue with indigenous epistem-
ologies, explores the modes of ethnic differentiation, the
existence of social hierarchies without centralization, territoriality
and historicity contained in indigenous narratives, highlighting
the processes generating identity and difference that are
expressed in languages, ritual life, material culture, etc. From eth-
nology and archaeology, a clear picture of past language
ecologies emerges, which is fundamental to understanding the
conditioning environment for changes in the internal and exter-
nal language histories. Conversely, our understanding of
language histories creates additional perspectives that bring
new information about past language ecologies and social his-
tory. In particular, we draw on the comparative method of
historical linguistics in the reconstruction of language features,
proto-languages, and the internal classification of each family,
coupled with the analysis of several kinds of language contact-
induced changes and linguistic areality at different scales.
3. Ethno-linguistic patterns
The region covered by the URN and neighbouring areas form
what we here refer to as the Northwest Amazon, which is
composed of around 70 languages belonging to 15 linguistic
families—including three isolates (see map of the region in
figure 1 and table 4 in electronic supplementary material
for more information about languages in our sample). The
boundaries of the NWA can be roughly equated with the dis-
tribution of Tukanoan and Arawakan languages belonging to
the Japurá-Colombia branch (JC-Arawakan), which follows
from the fact that Arawakan and Tukanoan ethnic encounters 3
are foundational for the URN ethnographic area as a whole,
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as shown in this paper. To the west of the URN, one finds
the Western Tukanoan (WT) branch, which is separated
from the Eastern Tukanoan (ET) branch by an intermediate
cultural area known as ‘People from the Center’, comprising
speakers of languages from the Witotoan and Boran linguistic
families, as well as Resígaro (JC-Arawakan), Andoque (a lin-
guistic isolate), and marginally, the Carijona (Kariban) in the
north. JC-Arawakan languages are also found outside the
URN: in the south, one finds the Kauishanic ‘cluster’ of
languages,2 and to the north of the URN area, in tributaries
of the Orinoco River, Achagua and Piapoco, who migrated
from the Içana-Vaupés area and established contacts with
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other local peoples, such as the Puinave, Guahiboan and
Saliba-Piaroa.
Current indigenous societies located within URN speak
around 35 languages, belonging to six linguistic families.
Most of the area is inhabited by speakers of languages of
the JC-Arawakan branch, plus all languages from the Eastern
Tukanoan (ET) branch of the Tukanoan family, as well as
Naduhup and Kakwa-Nukak families (also known as
‘Makú’) [11–14].3 In the western periphery of this region,
the Carijona are the only remaining populations of one or
more Kariban-speaking groups that were once very large
[15]. In the eastern periphery, one finds the Baré, a group
that originally spoke an Arawakan language before shifting
to Nheengatú, a language of the Tupí-Guaraní family that
was brought to the region during colonial times and used
for a long time as a lingua franca, after becoming the first
language for the Baré, the Baniwa from the lower Içana and
the Warekena from the Xié river.
There are some fundamental ideas and practices shared
among several groups in the NWA, including a system of
patrilineal descent rooted in conceptions of ancestry, territori-
ality and rights over material and immaterial goods, shared
narratives, rituals and shamanic practices [16–23]. They also
share elements of social organization based on a Dravidian
kinship terminology system that is manifested in the norm
that regulates all marital exchanges across patrilines, in
which exogamy depends on social units often hierarchically
organized into lineages, clans and phratries. Consanguinity
is also established by the maternal line, which is reflected
in social units through the creation of phratries composed
not only of agnatic social groups but also of groups who con-
sider themselves uterine siblings since they are in a relation of
co-affines of a third group (such as the so-called ‘mother’s
sons’ among the Tukanoan groups). The size and functioning
of these units present remarkable variation. For instance, in
the URN, clans are hierarchically related as older and
younger brothers into clusters of exogamic clans. By contrast,
in the western periphery of the NWA, for instance, the Mai-
huna, speakers of a WT language, clans are the highest
exogamic units and have no internal hierarchy [24]. Resi-
dence tends to be more strictly patri/virilocal for the
Tukanoan, Arawakan and also for more western groups,
such as speakers of Witotoan and Boran. For other groups,
such as Naduhup, Kakwa-Nukak, Maihuna and Carijona,
residence varies in viri/uxorilocal patterns.
Ethnic identities are built from elements such as
language, territory, common mythic ancestors, the mastery
of shamanistic and ritual knowledge, special diets, the pos-
session of certain varieties of cultigens and the manufacture
 of specialized objects that are exchanged across different
groups (for example, the Baniwa are famous for their cassava
graters, the Tukano for their benches, the Tuyuka for their
canoes, the Naduhup groups for their baskets and hunting
poisons (curare), the Tatuyo and Bará for their crowns of
feathers, the Makuna for their blowguns, the Kotiria
(Wanano) for their feather adornments, etc.). However, the
relationships between the different groups are dynamic,
and over time they can alter and reverse the relationships
of consanguinity, hierarchy and affinity [25–27], producing
segmentations and disputes between the clans, the formation
of local multilingual groups, the absorption of other groups
and social fissioning, and the adoption of another’s group
language, among other things.
The greatest contrast in the URN region is between the
‘riverine’ Arawakan and ET-speaking peoples and the
‘forest peoples’, who are speakers of Naduhup and Kakwa-
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Nukak languages. The former prefer to live on the banks of
rivers, in large malocas (longhouses) or villages, and subsist
preferentially on fishing and agriculture (especially on pro-
ducts derived from bitter manioc). By contrast, the forest
peoples traditionally subsist by hunting and the collecting
wild fruits, and they live in the headwaters of the rivers, con-
stantly travelling through various interfluves and residing in
temporary camps. Some forest peoples offer shamanic ser-
vices, hunting or other kinds of work for some ET groups
in exchange for derivatives of bitter manioc and other agricul-
tural products. In turn, long-lasting relationships with
particular forest peoples often lead the ET to incorporate
them into their social structure, albeit in a lower hierarchical
position. Intermarriages between forest peoples and ET
speakers exist, although it is more common to see a Tukanoan
man married to a Maku woman than vice versa.
The ‘riverine’ peoples are far from a homogeneous cat-
egory, however. For instance, there are riverine groups that
value hunting more than fishing, or that have learned to
build proper canoes only in more recent times. Andrello [25]
emphasis the gradient and relative distinctions within the riv-
erine peoples, contrasting those situated in more upriver
locations towards the headwaters with those located in more
downriver locations, towards the river mouth and closer to
the major rivers of the region. More downriver positions are
usually associated with control of economically richer areas
and important zones for regional mobility and exchange.
Regarding social organization, the Arawakan-speaking
groups are usually organized into exogamous phratries, com-
prising speakers of the same language, who have specific
names and occupy contiguous territories [28]. By contrast,
the ET-speakers form phratries without specific denomination,
which comprise groups that are ideally conceived as mythical
brothers. At the same time, there are intermediate cases, such
as the Kubeo, who speak a Tukanoan language and organize
themselves into phratries in the style of Arawakan speakers, or
the Tariana who have almost completely lost the Arawakan
language and today are mostly speakers of Tukano, with
whom they frequently intermarry.
In relation to certain socio-cosmological principles, all
groups in the area have narratives associated with the cre-
ation of humanity and social life. These narratives
constitute an important representation of their history and
are essential to personal and collective claims on identities,
ancestors, territories and knowledge. At the intersection of
history and territory, for instance, these narratives consist of
voyages connecting different places that, on the one hand, 4
represent a common macro-territory shared by all groups,
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and, on the other hand, specify the territory of each group
in particular. All these places refer, in general, to the way in
which current humanity acquired its knowledge and behav-
iour. At the same time, in most of these places there are
petroglyphs or vegetation modified by human presence,
which is the basis of their archaeological evidence for under-
standing regional history. In other words, certain places are
used to speak of a common origin and others to show
segmentations, differentiations, and unique alliances [29].
There are important differences among these narratives,
which reflect different historical processes. Most of the ET
groups report that the ancestors of their clans emerged
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from an Anaconda or Anaconda-Canoe after a long journey
that began somewhere in the east, reaching different streams
in the Vaupés and Apaporis rivers, which are considered
places of origin of humanity. In turn, the Naduhup also
explain their origin through the Anaconda-Canoe voyage
but assert that their ancestors led the way (and not the
Tukanoans). Other Naduhup groups claim they do not des-
cend from a diasporic journey but that their ancestors
originate within the URN. The diasporic pattern of Tukanoan
voyages contrast with Arawakan mythologies, which do not
speak of an ancestral Anaconda, but rather about concentric
journeys made by the primordial demiurges. These journeys
tend to begin and end in the Içana River (the ‘navel of the
world’), and involve travelling to places as distant as the
mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon [23,28,30]. In fact,
these narratives and their contrasts offer us an important
window into the structure of inter-ethnic relations,
multilingualism and their histories (see §6).
4. Archaeo-linguistic histories
Early occupations of the Amazon were made by several kinds
of tropical foragers societies, who first produced ceramics
before 4000 BCE, a time when horticulture was still nascent
in the region [31]. By around 1500 BCE one finds intense pro-
duction of ceramics, sedentary life, population growth,
development of extensive slash-and-burn agriculture and
semi-intensive house gardens, which marked a new phase
with major cultural changes in the natural landscape of Ama-
zonia [31–33]. By 0 CE, there is greater evidence of large
sedentary settlements, the construction of mounds, roads,
canals, the formation of terras pretas (Amazonian Dark
Earths, anthropic dark soils of high fertility produced by
long-term occupations), and the construction of geoglyphs
and monumental artificial structures in the Amazon River
and some of its largest tributaries, such as the Upper Purús,
Upper Madeira and Upper Xingú [34]. The diversity of
localized and dispersed examples of such constructions
throughout most of the Amazon Basin demonstrates that
the socio-political changes at the beginning of the first millen-
nium CE occurred on a large scale. This coincides with the
beginning period of population growth that was experienced
in the Late Holocene [33]. Apparently, all these changes were
not related to any specific ceramic tradition or cultural group,
but to a series of long-term interactions. In fact, the ceramic
remains demonstrate a great cultural diversity as there were
simultaneous developments of different phases and tra-
ditions in different places [35], as well as coexistence
 between some phases in the same regions without necessarily
showing conflicts of one over another.
During these 3000 years, the region’s cultural history has
been marked by a few rapid expansive macro-ethnolinguistic
groups and identities, reflected in the widespread presence in
Lowland South America of the Arawakan, Tupi-Guarani,
Kariban and Je families. These expansive, often—but not
only—diasporic processes account for 128 (51%) of today’s
250 Amazonian languages. These large-scale processes have
been balanced by local trends of maintenance and diversifica-
tion of many local languages, resulting in 122 languages from
43 mid- and small-size linguistic families, such as Tukanoan,
Panoan, Chapacuran, Arauan, Yanomami, Saliban-Piaroan,
Zaparoan, etc., including 24 language isolates. These out-
comes are partial consequences of the formation of regional
inter-ethnic systems that have balanced trends of linguistic
and ethnic expansion with minimal language replacement
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or shift, coupled with in situ diversification of more localized
linguistic families and ethnic identities [36].
The NWA and URN can be seen as part of this more gen-
eral historical process [29]. For one, one finds in the NWA a
combination of large linguistic families expanding from
neighbouring areas (Arawakan, Kariban) with mid- and
small-size linguistic families and language isolates
(Tukanoan, Naduhup, Witotoan, Boran, Puinave, Andoque),
which seem local to this broad region. In archaeological
sites of the middle and upper Caquetá-Japurá River, there
are perhaps some of the oldest archaeological remains of
human activity in South America, with some of the initial
dates of occupation going back to the end of the Pleistocene
(20 000 BCE, if one accepts this antiquity of human settlement
in the Americas) and others to the beginning of the Holocene
(10 000 BCE). La Lindosa and Chiribiquete are important sites
as they are separated by less than 200 km and lie around the
watersheds of the Guaviare, Vaupés and Apaporis rivers,
which interconnect three large hydrographic basins: the
Orinoco, the Rio Negro and the Caquetá. In all these sites,
the presence of various groups of hunter–gatherers who
favoured hunting, fishing and the collection of palm tree
fruits can be suggested, in a manner similar to the ‘forest
peoples’ do today. However, this does not mean that we
should consider these vestiges in the region as evidence of
the Proto-Naduhup themselves, since peoples with similar
material culture are seen throughout the Amazon Basin in
the Early Holocene (see in particular [37–39]).4
4.1. Arawakan diaspora
Several authors concur that the formation of Amazonian
regional systems of inter-ethnic and multilingual relations
have as a major chapter the dispersion of peoples and cul-
tural practices associated with Arawakan languages [40–49].
From an archaeological perspective, Nordensköld [50]
argued for a relation between the distribution of Arawakan
languages and the incised-modelled ceramics found across
Lowland South America. This was taken up by Lathrap
[51], who hypothesized that the similarities of the Hupa-iya
ceramic style in the Ucayali, the Barrancoid ceramics of the
Lower Orinoco and the Incised-Rim tradition of the
Amazon have a common origin in the Central Amazon.
Michael Heckenberger [43] observes that these broad simi-
larities in the archaeological record were accompanied by
key features of Arawakan social organization, including
social hierarchy, permanent and densely populated villages, 5
economies based on agriculture, especially bitter manioc,
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sociopolitical integration based on exchange, a regional soci-
ality rooted in kinship ties and shared territory, and in a
pacifist ideology. Heckenberger [34] proposes a model to
the Arawakan diaspora divided in three phases: (1) the first
phase of the Arawakan diaspora (ca 3000 BP to 2000 BP)
fits the idea of a ‘Neolithic revolution’, reflecting the move-
ments and interactions of early root-crop horticulturalists;
(2) the second phase (ca 2000 to 1000 BP) is marked by less
large-scale movements and the development of regional inte-
gration in small- to medium-sized polities; (3) the third phase
(1000 to 500 BP) is marked by the creation of wide networks
connecting distinct regional systems in ‘vast native world sys-
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tems’, which seems to coincide with the growing importance
of Kariban and Tupian speaking groups, as well as other
medium-sized families, such as Panoan and Tukanoan.
The analysis by Arroyo-Kalin & Riris [33] suggests that
the Arawakan expansion occurred from the middle Orinoco
and the Guianas, going south and west around 300–400
BCE, followed by a period of heterogeneous regional
growth, with processes of interregional cross fertilization
and formation of small areas of terras pretas between 100–
300 CE and 500–600 CE, and population decline in Central
Amazonia. This was followed by a period of population
growth, associated with the expansion of the Incised-
Punctuated and Polychrome traditions, which were likely
related to Kariban and Tupian expansions, between 600
and 1200 CE. In this way, one can hypothesize that the pro-
cesses of linguistic diversification of Arawakan languages
would have occurred in parallel, reaching a high peak
during this period.
It seems clear that the Arawakan diaspora cannot be
explained only by demic migration. Equally important were
the relations Arawakan migrants had with local populations
and how Arawakan culture and language became broader
than the original Arawakan-speaking population themselves.
Many scholars refer to ‘ethnogenesis’ as a powerful mechan-
ism behind Arawakization in many areas of the Amazon
[34,46–48], whereby sociocultural identities and frontiers
were continuously negotiated and changed over time, with
incorporations and emulations of ethnic markers leading to
the establishment and reproduction of regional identities
and exchange of specialized products within an extensive
long-distance trade network. Hornborg [46] also suggests
that the intensification of maize and cassava cultivation
would have been an incentive for the production of fermen-
ted beverages, whose ‘ceremonial’ consumption was
oriented toward the creation and maintenance of social
relations. These social relations were the basis for establishing
‘commercial partners’ or potential allies, a process that
demonstrates the openness of the system. This idea is sup-
ported in the archaeological record by the presence of
ceramic vessels used for storing fermented beverages and in
the contemporary importance of commensality and the shar-
ing of substances for the construction of social and kinship
relationships among contemporary Amazonian peoples. It
is possible that current rituals of exchange (including parties
with fermented drinks, dabucuri in the URN) are a continu-
ation of a mode of sociality created in the Amazon around
2000 years ago. Such events are directly related to ideas
about hierarchy in a context of networks and diverse forms
of exchange.

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Figure 2. Archaeological sites, ceramic traditions and phases of Northwest Amazonia and adjacent areas.
4.2. Ceramic traditions and ethnographic areas
The main archaeological zones, ceramic traditions and phases
that we discuss in this section are summarized in figure 2.
Pocó-Açutuba is the first ceramic tradition with zoomorphic
and anthropomorphic appendages. Its distribution follows
an east–west orientation, ranging from the mouths of the Tapa-
jós River (1200 BCE), Central Amazon (300 BCE), Rio Branco
(no date) and Japurá-Caquetá (700 BCE), respectively. The
sites associated with this tradition are found on the banks of
large rivers, which represent a new mode of occupation and
use of the environment and are related to a first moment of
greater anthropization of the forest. Pocó-Açutuba ceramics
are found on the bases of most sites in Amazonia, except for
the Japurá-Caquetá, which suggests that this ceramic tradition
was imported and/or transported to this river from elsewhere
[32]. However, although there are earlier dates in the east than
in the west, the fact that Central Amazonia has the most recent
dates complicates the hypothesis of a movement of the Pocó-
Açutuba tradition up to the Amazon. At the same time, we
cannot rule out that this tradition could have reached the Cen-
tral Amazon from the middle Orinoco and along the Rio
Negro. In any case, the existence of the Pocó-Açutuba tradition
can support the hypothesis of an expansion of Arawakan-
speaking peoples, which would have been relatively rapid
and with almost simultaneous occupation of distant areas.
At the beginning of the first millennium CE, the Pocó-Açu-
tuba tradition begins to overlap with other styles and is
eventually replaced. From this period until approximately
1100 CE, the evidence of sedentarization, demographic
growth, the formation of terras pretas and the construction of
6
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ceramic traditions
Amazonian Polychrom
Barrancoid/lncised Rim
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Pocó-Acutuba
Parallel Lines
Amanã
Camani
Méidote
archaeological sites
circular villages in the Central Amazon intensifies. Around
the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were important
changes associated with expansion of the Polychrome Tra-
dition, which is found between the Andean foothills and the
lower Amazon [52] and is known in Central Amazonia as
the Guarita Phase (900–1500 CE), in Caquetá as the Nofurei
Phase (777 CE to 1436 CE), and in the Upper Orinoco as
Garza (1500–1650 CE). Although its major expansion occurs
around 1100 CE, its earliest date is ca 440 CE (found in Lake
Tefé, near the mouth of the Japurá-Caquetá with the Soli-
mões), with its latest dates in the eighteenth century CE [52].
The sites of this tradition are both multicomponential and uni-
componential, showing great local variations, and different
forms of interaction with previous occupations. In the Lower
Madeira and the Lower Rio Negro there is evidence of the con-
struction of defensive structures, which implies conflicts with
the arrival of producers of the Polychrome Tradition. In
other regions, such as the Lower Japurá-Caquetá, the relations
were peaceful [52–54]. Brochado [55] has proposed that the
Polychrome Tradition is associated with the expansion of
Tupi groups along the central channel of the Amazon,
although in reality this seems to be a reflection of different
and complex social–political interactions that occurred gradu-
ally over 500 years [52], as there are connections between Pocó-
Açutuba painting techniques and those of the Polychrome Tra-
dition [56] and their dispersion seems to depend more on
networks of exchange and emulation of elements of their tech-
nology [52] rather than on the expansion of a linguistic family.
Although the macro-processes related to these ceramic tra-
ditions are common in the Central Amazon, Japurá-Caquetá,
 the Upper Negro and Orinoco, the local processes seem to
have been very different. We discuss this point next.
4.2.1. Central Amazonia, Upper Rio Negro and Upper Orinoco
In Central Amazonia, a long-term continuous occupation was
established between 500 BCE and 1500 CE [35]. This period
was characterized by important changes in the size and
shape of the settlements, as well as in the patterns of ceramic
decoration. The chronology includes the Açutuba phase
between 400 BCE and 400 CE; the Manacapuru phase
between 400 and 900 CE; the Paredão phase (Incised Rim
Tradition) between 700 and 1250 CE, and the Guarita phase
between (Polychrome tradition) 900 and 1500 CE. This chron-
ology suggests that these occupations overlapped for some
centuries and that people who made the different ceramics
lived at relatively close distances. This points to the coexis-
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tence of a diversity of ethnic groups in time and space. The
Manacapuru and Paredão phases are directly related, since
in some there are ceramic remains from both phases, demon-
strating integration and exchange, which may have included
exogamy. The villages associated with both phases had circu-
lar or horseshoe formats, containing a central plaza, the
building of mounds, enormous amounts of ceramic remains
and burial of the dead directly or in funerary urns. All of
this suggests dense population and sociopolitical hierarchy.
Crucially, despite such signs of social hierarchy, these occu-
pations show alternations between periods of centralization
and political decentralization, as reflected in the sudden aban-
donment of sites, both large and small, as if there were
tensions between a hierarchical and centripetal ideology with
the centrifugal, fragmentary and decentralized character of
family productive units [57]. This seems to have changed
with the appearance of the Guarita occupation, as the format
of the villages altered radically: they decrease in size and
include defensive structures, which indicates bellicose
conflicts.
In the archaeology of the Upper Orinoco and Rio Negro,
dates for the initial ceramics and transition between major
types show striking similarities with the picture in Central
Amazonia. There is also more similarity in formal, techno-
logical and stylistic traits with ceramic complexes in the
lowlands to the north of the Amazon River and the Cedeñoid
series of the Middle Orinoco River, rather than with archaeol-
ogy of Saladoid or Barrancoid series in Lower Orinoco [58].
Five ceramic complexes of the URN and Upper Orinoco
area were grouped into the ‘Parallel Lines’ tradition by
Zucchi [42,59,60], who also argues that this was the original
ceramic tradition of speakers of Proto-Northern-Arawakan
(including JC-Arawakan). Parallel Lines was transformed in
a number of local phases in the Upper Orinoco and URN
[42]: Iboa (1730 ± 80 BP–940 ± 60 BP), Carutico (1800 ± 80 BP
to 800 BP), Pueblo Viejo (1400 BP and 1000 BP). These early
sites were produced by riverine populations living in small
settlements. Nericagua (1159 ± 122 BP–544 ± 113 BP) devel-
oped as local transformations from its predecessor Iboa
phase. Previously, Nericagua was interpreted within the
Incised Rim Tradition by Evans et al. [61], who also noted
the presence of sites organized as mounds around a central
plaza. The latest local phase was Garza (1450 CE–1600 CE),
which represents a second-level occupation in the Pueblo
Viejo area and whose ceramic remains were interpreted as
part of the Amazon Polychrome tradition. At the same
time, in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, near the mouth of the 7
Vaupés River, Neves [62] states that contemporary ceramics
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retain a morphology similar to that of the Guarita vessels of
the Polychrome tradition, although there is still no chronol-
ogy and no constructions of circular format reported for the
sites. Ceramics produced by contemporary Tukanoan and
Arawakan peoples in the URN retain a number of similarities
and discontinuities with archaeological styles. A comparison
of these ceramics shows formal and technological similarities,
mostly in terms of vessel shape and antiplastic, but no dec-
orative similarities [62]. At the same time, a clear stylistic
divide is maintained between the ceramics associated with
Tukanoan and Arawakan zones.
Historically, for the Vaupés, Neves [62] reports ceramic
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findings at the Marabitanas I site in the lower section of the
river related to Parallel Lines tradition dated to 2500 BP. Fol-
lowing Zucchi’s hypothesis, he suggests that lower Vaupés
was occupied by groups related to either the Baré or the
Warekena groups, an extension of the Arawakan presence
in the Içana, Xie, Rio Negro and Upper Orinoco rivers.
These groups would likely speak languages from a different
Arawakan subgroup, other than Japurá-Colombia, such as
from the Upper Orinoco or Middle Rio Negro branches.
This shows that the Rio Negro properly was a main centre
of diversification of Arawakan languages, but not necessarily
for JC-Arawakan, whose main diversification zone was in the
Caquetá-Japurá [63]. More recently, according to oral history,
the Tariana (JC-Arawakan) have migrated from the Içana to
the central Vaupés and were at war with several Tukanoan-
speaking groups. These accounts correlate with the archaeo-
logical findings by Neves [64] who identified a fortified
settlement from around the fourteenth and fifteenth centu-
ries CE that are attributed to the Tariana. The fortification
remains shows evidence of a single and short-term occu-
pation. Oral history mentions that after the war, the Tariana
made peace and began to marry with several Tukanoan-
speaking groups. Neves also suggests that the ancestral terri-
tory of the ET groups was the Papuri River, a tributary of the
Vaupés River, where they would have been settled for
hundreds of years before the fifteenth century, that the differ-
entiation of the present ET languages was a recent and
endemic phenomenon of the region, and that colonial contact
allowed them to expand to areas that were left uninhabited
by the demographic changes caused by the epidemics and
the slave raids. The Tukano lived on fishing and agriculture
based on wild manioc, although faced with the difficulties
of opening large crops on dry land, they would use an
agro-ecological system based on the cultivation of fruit trees
such as japurá and palms such as pupunha, açaí and
bacaba [65].
4.2.2. Japurá-Caquetá
The evidence from the Japurá-Caquetá river shows different
regional processes from Central Amazon. 5 In the lower
Japurá, in Lake Amanã, the sequence of occupations start
with the Amanã phases (1500–800 BC, a phase that has not
yet been linked to any major ceramic tradition), Pocó (600–
400 BC, from Pocó-Açutuba tradition), Caiambé (640–1100
AD, Incised Rim Tradition) and Tefé (800 AD, Polychrome
Tradition) [66]. Gomes & Neves [53] highlight that the
Caiambé phase used a painting technique that makes it
slightly different from its contemporary from Central
 Amazonia, the Manacapuru phase. Hilbert [67] described the
Caiambé and Tefé phases as overlapping and showing a gra-
dual transition sequence from one to the other. Thus, unlike
Central Amazonia, there is no evidence of conflict between
the occupations of both traditions, which suggests friendly
relations and exchanges.
In the middle Japurá-Caquetá river, around the border of
Brazil and Colombia, Pocó-Açutuba or more specifically Bar-
rancoid/Incised Rim tradition encompasses the Japurá Phase
[51,68–70], which is also associated with the emergence of
terras pretas. Its chronology has not yet been fully defined:
some authors have reported a more recent chronology, such
as the findings in Hilbert [67] who identified several places
along the lower and middle Japurá river containing Japurá
phase ceramics, dated to 654 and 767 AD in the Mangueiras
site in Brazil. In upriver sites around La Pedrera in Colombia,
Japurá ceramics and dark Earth deposits have also been
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reported with dates ranging from 560 ± 75 CE, 560 ± 21 CE
to 1164–1246 CE [71]. Other authors report much older
dates going back to 1900 BCE and lasting up to 1300 CE
[72], which would suggest an origin in the NWA, although
there are dates in the Tapajós-Trombetas with the same anti-
quity. Myers [73] states that the occupations with Incised Rim
pottery from this region (560 AD) show small sites, different
to what has been seen in Central Amazonia and comparable
to the sizes of the early twentieth century malocas of Tiquié
and Ayari in the URN. Indeed, no remains of circular villages
have been found. Myers also mentions that in more recent
occupations, around 1100 CE, there are polychrome ceramics
that have not yet been classified.
Further upriver in the middle Caquetá, there are several
important sites such as Araracuara, Abeja and Peña Roja,
where remains related to Pocó-Açutuba and the Incised
Rim Tradition have not been consistently found, only some
fragments in Peña Roja [72]. In fact, these sites are marked
by regional ceramic phases such as the Méidote (500–1300
CE), only found in Abeja) and the Camani (800 BCE–900
CE) that are not related to any of the great Amazonian tra-
ditions. The latter is of special interest due to its antiquity,
duration, formation of terras pretas at the beginning of the
first millennium AD and overlapping in multi-componential
sites with Nofurei ceramics, a regional variety of the Poly-
chrome Tradition, which presents dates between 800 and
1300 CE [71].
Different authors concur that the Nofurei phase was the
result of an encounter between two groups producing different
kinds of ceramics: the local Camaní and a ceramic style such as
the Japurá phase, which already presented Pocó-Açutuba and
Incised Rim features with transitional Polychrome character-
istics [51]. For Herrera et al. [74] when Nofurei potters
entered the middle Caquetá area, they assimilated or pushed
back the previous population. As for Zucchi [59], the Nofurei
phase could represent innovations in the Camani phase due to
contact with potters producing Japurá ceramics. For Arroyo-
Kalin et al. [72], the Nofurei phase shows important differences
regarding other neighbouring and contemporaneous Amazo-
nian Polychrome ceramics, such as the Napo, Tefé and
Guarita phases, especially in the forms of vessels and modes
of plastic and paint decoration, suggesting that such differ-
ences could be the result of a ceramics that derive from
Pocó-Açutuba but is strongly influenced (in stylistic terms)
by the expansion of groups in the Polychrome tradition and
that the expansion of these latter groups could have pushed
the original producers of Pocó-Açutuba ceramics towards 8
the Araracuara and Peña Roja areas. Gomes & Neves [53]
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suggest that the arrival of the Polychrome tradition occurred
in a friendly disposition with original producers of Pocó-
Açutuba ceramics in the Japurá area, with relations such as
intermarriage, commerce, imitation and emulation of ceramics
between producers of both traditions in this section of the
Amazon river.
5. Linguistic diversity, contact and language
ecologies
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In addition to a high number of languages and linguistic
families, the URN is rich in different kinds of language
ecologies, which are usually marked by intense forms of
language contact and multilingualism. The most widely
known view about URN linguistic diversity comes from
language ecology in the central Vaupés area, which has
been traditionally characterized by structural convergence
between languages coupled with low incidence of direct bor-
rowings, strong linguistic awareness, loyalty to the language
code, the use of language as an emblem of patrilineal ethnic
identity and egalitarian multilingualism [75–79]. However,
the URN and the NWA also host a variety of other language
ecologies that have shaped different forms of contact-induced
changes and diversification patterns. For instance, Epps [80]
notices a sharp contrast between contact relations mediated
by native languages versus contacts between indigenous
and non-indigenous groups using colonial linguae francae.
The latter has resulted more often in code-switching, lexical
borrowing and large-scale language shift (see also Aikhen-
vald [75] for a contrast of Tariana-Tukano and Tariana-
Portuguese contacts). Some studies also highlight asymmetric
relations between languages spoken by riverine peoples and
those spoken by forest peoples, with a relative dominance of
the former over the latter [77,81–83]. With respect to
Tukanoan and Arawakan contacts, while cases of egalitarian
multilingualism have been reported, other studies discuss
contexts with relatively greater dominance of Arawakan
languages with respect to Tukanoan [84–87], or Tukanoan
dominance over Arawakan languages (see Aikhenvald [77]
for the case of Tariana and Tukano contacts in more recent
times; for the Kubeo, see [84,88,89]; for the Tanimuka and
Letuama, see [87,90] and Arias et al. [91]). In the following,
we present data from lexical borrowing as a way to reveal
forms and kinds of inter-ethnic contacts. Then, we compare
Arawakan, Naduhup and Tukanoan languages with respect
to their distinct patterns of internal diversity as a way to
discuss their distinct sociolinguistic histories.
5.1. Lexical borrowing
We would like to highlight in this paper the lexical evidence
for long-term interethnic relations in the NWA and URN
areas, by showing two kinds of etyma that have been diffused
by borrowing across major families in the NWA. In one set
are words shared between Tukanoan and other languages
in the NWA, but which are not found in Arawakan
languages. In another set are words that fit more exclusively
in a Tukanoan and Arawakan contact situation (see §4 of the
electronic supplementary material).
 Table 1. Summary statistics of internal linguistic diversity within Tukanoan, JC-Arawakan and Naduhup languages.
no. of languages
no. of cognates
phylogenetic diversity
mean lexical distance
median lexical distance
range of lexical distances (min. and max.)
standard deviation in lexical distance
Concerning the forms shared by Tukanoan and other
groups in the NWA with the exception of Arawakan languages,
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they reveal a dimension of ethnic interactions and worldview
exchange that have not required the role of Arawakan societies
as articulators of inter-ethnic exchanges. As such, they suggest
a form of multi-lingual social system that probably pre-existed
the arrival of Arawakan languages in the region.
Concerning the set of etymologically related words
shared by Arawakan and Tukanoan languages, Chacon [86]
has argued that Tukanoan and Arawakan contact is not a
recent phenomenon or restricted to the Vaupés area by show-
ing that direct and indirect borrowings between languages
from these two families have taken place since the times of
Proto-Tukanoan. Building on these findings, we have selected
a group of Arawakan and Tukanoan etymologically related
words that attest to different kinds of inter-ethnic contacts
throughout history. These words can be divided in three sets:
1. words that can be reconstructed to PT and PJC (e.g. hum-
mingbird, Earth);
2. words that might have been borrowed after the initial
diversification of Tukanoan (e.g. bitter manioc, toucan,
agouti, capybara); and
3. words that are more exclusive to the ET languages and the
URN inter-ethnic relations ( flesh, other and one, lizard,
bamboo, yellow, ayawaska/Yajé).
These three sets of etymologically related words reveal
that Arawakan and Tukanoan languages share more intense,
durable and specialized forms of inter-ethnic contacts in the
NWA context. In addition, despite being a common phenom-
enon for both ET and WT languages, contacts between
Arawakan and those ET languages that came into the URN
and the Vaupés areas are certainly qualitatively different
from the contacts of Arawakan and WT groups, which
suggests different kinds of inter-ethnic relations between
groups of Arawakan and Tukanoan speakers.
5.2. Contrastive diversification patterns
One fundamental point of difference among Arawakan,
Tukanoan and Naduhup families—which has been less
explored in the literature—concerns their contrastive patterns
of linguistic diversity [92,93].6 Considering their sheer
number of languages, Tukanoan is followed by Arawakan
and then by Naduhup when we rank them accordingly to
the number of languages. There are about four Naduhup
languages, 15 JC-Arawakan languages and close to 30
9
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Tukanoan JC-Arawakan Naduhup
23 13 4
429 415 194
1.57 1.07 0.35
0.27 0.20 0.19
0.22 0.20 0.20
0.02–0.34 0.07–0.30 0.10–0.23
0.08 0.05 0.05
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Tukanoan languages. From the 35 languages that are spoken
in the URN, four are Naduhup, four are Arawakan and 22
are Tukanoan. All 22 Tukanoan languages in the URN
belong to the ET branch, while all six WT languages are located
outside the URN. Most JC-Arawakan languages, including
those in the URN, belong to the Nuclear-JC subgroup which
has a total of 10 languages (see §1 in electronic supplementary
material for a list of languages and their genetic classification,
as well as §2 on the internal subclassification of Arawakan,
Tukanoan and Naduhup languages).
Besides comparing the linguistic families by their sheer
number of languages, at another level, contrastive diversifica-
tion patterns were assessed by the degree of internal
phylogenetic diversity and linguistic distances between
languages within each family. As is the case concerning the
number of languages, the internal diversity of Tukanoan is
greater, followed by JC-Arawakan and then Naduhup.
Table 1 summarizes some basic measurement of internal
diversity and distances, while a graphic interpretation of lin-
guistic relationships is offered in figure 3. Concerning first the
measurements of internal diversity, although the same set of
concepts was used for all families, the number of cognate sets
is greater in Tukanoan (429 cognate sets), followed by Arawa-
kan (415) and Naduhup (194), which means that Tukanoan
languages simply had more lexical innovations than the
other families. (The magnitude of the difference of Tukano-
ans number of cognate sets from Arawakan, however, is not
as great as in the number of languages across the two
families.) As for the internal phylogenetic diversity (PD), it
is greater in Tukanoan (1.57) followed by Arawakan (1.07)
and Naduhup (0.35). This shows that Tukanoan languages
are more diverse concerning the number of internal changes
separating each language in the family, correlating with the
fact that it has a greater number of cognate sets. Concerning
lexical distances, Arawakan and Naduhup have a similar
average amount of pairwise distances between all languages,
while Tukanoan holds greater internal disparity between its
languages. Similar patterns are observed in other values,
such as median, range and standard deviation of internal dis-
tances, where Tukanoan looks internally more diverse, with
greater asymmetries across its languages (mainly across ET
and WT, but internally to ET as well) than Arawakan and
Naduhup. Table 5 (in §2.1.4 from the electronic supplemen-
tary material) has a multi-scale snapshot on the number of
languages, average lexical distances, and phylogenetic diver-
sity across major clades in each family. We can see that
Tukanoan languages always have more languages, greater
lexical distances, and greater phylogenetic diversity at all
 (a) (b) 10
0.01 0.1
Koripako Upper lsana

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Baniwa Central lsana
Baniwa Lower lsana Koripako Guania
Yahuna Tanimuca-Letuama
Tariana Vaupes Yupua
Northeastern Koretu Desano
JC Siriano
Achagua
Yukunic cluster Koreguaje
Kabiyari Sekoya
Piapoco Nuclear JC Maih ki
Siona Makuna
Yukuna
Kauishanic Western Tukanoan Eastern Tukanoan
Barasana
Cluster
Passe Kubeo
Tukanoid
Tatuyo
Resigaro Karapana
Nuclear ET Waimaha (Bara clan)
Kotiria (Wanano) Bara

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Yumana
Tukano Tuyuca
Waikhana (Piratapuyo) Yuruti Pisamira
Kauixana
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(c) 0.01
Hup

Yuhup

Daw

Nadeb

Figure 3. Neighbornets based on basic vocabulary for JC-Arawakan, Naduhup and Tukanoan families.

levels. However, in lower clades, such as Tukanoid, as lexical
distances get shorter, one still observes an exceptionally high
number of languages. By contrast, WT languages, other lower
ET clades (such as Kubeo, Makuna-Barasana) and Naduhup
seem to have a more symmetric pattern among themselves,
distinct from Tukanoid. As for JC-Arawakan, the internal
diversity tends to be more similar to ET in having greater
phylogenetic diversity and lexical distance, while more
similar to the Naduhup in having fewer languages than ET.
5.2.1. Age
How to explain these different patterns of diversity across
Tukanoan, Arawakan and Naduhup? The first hypothesis
would be that difference in diversity is a result of families
having distinct ages or time lapse since initial diversification,
under de-assumption that greater diversification correlates
with relatively greater time depths. It turns out that all three
families have been heuristically dated to a similar time
depth: Naduhup 500 CE–1000 BCE [13], Tukanoan 0 CE–500
BCE [94], JC-Arawakan 0 CE [95]. These putative ages were
calculated heuristically by using analogical reasoning when
comparing the degree of internal diversity in each family
with the internal diversity of linguistic families that can be
more directly dated from historical sources. However, as we
see, age alone cannot explain the observed rates of diversifica-
tion. For instance, if we assume that ET and WT branches have
essentially the same age, what could explain that there are ca
three times more languages in ET than in WT? Before more
work on dating is available, we can assume the three families
have a comparably similar time depth. This allows us to
explore the role of different kinds of social and historical fac-
tors shaping different patterns of diversification in each family.
5.2.2. Extinction rates
Another variable that could explain the asymmetries in the
number of languages across each family concerns their different
rates of language extinction. Judging from what can be histori-
cally known, the greatest proportional loss of languages has
been documented for JC-Arawakan with eight languages
(53%) undergoing extinction in historical times (Kauishana,
Jumana, Passé, Mepuri, Resígaro, Wainuma, Mariate, Manda-
waka). Likewise, three WT (37%) (Tama, Amaguaje, Pioje)
have ceased to be spoken historically. A higher proportion of
language extinction in Arawakan family could be explained
by their location in major Amazonia waterways and, thus,
having been the primary targets of epidemics, slave raids, relo-
cations and warfare. Likewise, early colonial activity in the
Caquetá and Putumayo could also have contributed to depopu-
lation and extinction of WT groups. By contrast, groups of
smaller tributaries and the hinterlands would be less exposed
to these early effects due to their more remote locations. This
seems to have been the case for ET with five extinct languages
(only 25% from the total: Arapaço, Koaiwana, Miriti-Tapuya,
Yupua, Yahuna) and Naduhup, for which we have no knowl-
edge of a reportedly extinct language. It is also true that this
could be due to the lack of more precise information over the
 zone they inhabit. In any event, geographical location and colo-
nial activities are indeed the main factors relating to language
extinction. This crosscuts the territoriality of local societies,
where politically dominant social groups are in general located
in more downriver locations. Thus, all Arawakan languages
that were extinct were located in areas with easy access to
early colonial enterprises (such as the Achagua in the Colom-
bian Llanos and the Kauishana, Jumana, Passé, Mepuri, Baré,
Manao in the Caquetá-Japurá and Rio Negro). The same is
true for all Tukanoan languages spoken in the lower sections
of major rivers, such as Koretu in the mouth of the Apaporis
and the Caquetá, or the Koaiwana and Arapaço in the lower
Vaupés. Whether there has been language extinction in
Naduhup during the colonial period is more difficult to
assess. In any event, writers about the history of the URN and
Japurá-Caquetá areas [28,96] do not highlight the Naduhup
or any other forest peoples as being particular targets of warfare
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and slave raids more than other riverine groups living in the
periphery of the territories.
5.2.3. Demography and economy
Population size and economic organization of societies are
notoriously related, and more agriculturalist, riverine and
less mobile or sedentary groups, such as many Arawakan
and ET-speaking groups, were able to grow larger populations
than the forest peoples. Hence, the population of ET speakers
for about 20 languages that we have information is of 50 598
individuals, against 8096 speakers of four WT languages and
3129 of all four Naduhup languages (see §3 in electronic sup-
plementary material for sources of information and complete
list of populations per ethnic group). JC-Arawakan languages
spoken in the URN are estimated in a population of 34 662 indi-
viduals, distributed across five groups: Baniwa (10 833),
Koripako (18 544), Tariana (2894), Yukuna (1582) and Kabiyari
(809). Indeed, the largest ethnic populations in the NWA are
Arawakan, such as the Baniwa-Koripako, who total about 29
000 individuals in Brazil and Colombia, or the Piapoco which
amount to ca 14 000 individuals. Some Tukanoan languages
also have large populations, such as the Kubeo with about
15 000 individuals and the Tukano with a population of
about 10 000. Nevertheless, many Tukanoan languages are
much smaller in size, with populations around 1000 individ-
uals, roughly the same population of Hup (1500) and Yuhup
(1000), respectively. Although individually each Arawakan
language in the URN has a population comparable in size to
other local groups, proportionally Arawakan languages have
bigger populations: the mean speaker population of JC-Arawa-
kan languages in the URN is 6932 speakers per language,
whereas ET has 2529 and Naduhup, 782 speakers per
language. This shows that JC-Arawakan languages are fewer
in number but larger in demographic size, while the reverse
is true for Tukanoan, with twice more languages than Arawa-
kan but with a smaller demographic size. As for Naduhup
languages, they are fewer in number and smaller in demo-
graphic size on average.
5.2.4. Ethnicity and language boundaries
Besides showing that demographic size of individual
languages does not alone directly reflect in more or less
languages per family, or in greater or smaller divergence
across languages within each family, these facts suggest that
language boundaries—that is, what speakers refer to as a
‘language’ (versus a dialect of a language)—are established 11
by underlying ethnic mechanism that use languages as a
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mean to express ideologies related to descent and exogamy.
In most ET-speaking groups, language boundaries align with
an intermediate social unit of patrilineal descent and virilocal
residence, that also defines alterity, as affines typically belong
to a different patriline and speak a different language. This is
sustained in an alignment of language, ethnic and geographi-
cal boundaries, creating a system that ideally conflates
patrilocal exogamy (across villages/malocas), social exogamy
(across patrilineal groups) and linguistic exogamy (language
boundaries across patrilects). By contrast, for the Naduhup,
cognatic relations between kins and affines within the residen-
tial and regional groups seem to be a more relevant factor than
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patrilineal relations for defining language boundaries [97];
indeed, for Naduhup groups, the most salient perception of
language boundary is the dialect of each regional group [98].
Such a preference for linguistic and regional endogamy con-
trasts with the situation of Baniwa-Koripako, where language
boundaries also index a common ethnicity among kins and
preferential affines, but residence is patri/virilocal [99]. Thus,
Arawakan, Tukanoan and Naduhup-speaking societies tend
to use language boundaries following similar principles of
social organization but expressing different emphasis in certain
dimensions of ethnicity, as illustrated in table 2.
The different models of ethnicity and language boundaries
can explain the correlations among number of languages, lexi-
cal distances and demographic sizes (see also [97,100,101]).
In many ET sociolinguistic contexts, language boundaries
are construed across small populations and more similar
languages. This follows from the fact that ET groups magnify
their internal differences to construe sharp boundaries of alter-
ity across patrilineal groups and more inclusive boundaries of
identity within patrilineal social units (the long-house,
lineages, clans and phratries). As for JC-Arawakan, their
language diversification pattern reflects the expansion and
maintenance of social networks within and across social
units that are/were large in population size, that occupy long
stretches of continuous territories and that use languages to
construe socialization and common identity across people
related by consanguinity and affinity. As such, Arawakan
language boundaries are generally larger and more inclusive
than in neighbouring societies, as Arawakan groups minimize
internal differences in order to construe an expansive ethnolin-
guistic identity by intermarriage, phratric expansions and
inter-ethnic alliances, sustaining shared identities across large
populations and territories. By contrast, Naduhup groups
are intermediate to the extent that they maximize internal
differences across residential groups, while still maintaining a
general sense of common ethnicity with those speaking similar
lects dispersed in a vast territory. As a result, Naduhup
language boundaries encompass lects with higher average lex-
ical distances but comparable population size to Tukanoan.
This stems from a process of isolation by distance, where
languages have diversified by the creation of language bound-
aries as a result of geographical separation of residential and
regional groups and little regular contact between them.
5.2.5. Territoriality, social interactions and multilingualism
The six linguistic families spoken currently in the URN are par-
tially the result of ancient local diversity of linguistic families
and partially the result of population movement, specially
 Table 2. Language boundaries and ethnicity in the URN.
consanguinity
alterity languages differ within patrilineal groups
identification languages are the same within patrilineal roups
g
legend Arawakan
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from languages whose geographical origins are found abroad.
At the same time, the URN as a geographical zone has
remained for longer times less accessible to the colonial enter-
prise, in part because of its remoteness from major urban
centres, making it a place where many indigenous groups
could have sought refugia. Thus, while considerable linguistic
diversity has been brought from abroad, it has also found the
social and cultural conditions to thrive in the URN. We suggest
in §6 that this system of local diversity and incoming diversity
stem from pre-colonial times.
Given the relationship between language boundaries, exo-
gamy, descent and occupation of the territory, language
ecologies also contrast regarding how multilingual the different
spatial spheres of social interactions are. For many ET groups in
the Papuri or Pira-Parana rivers, nuclear families are minimally
bilingual, villages are multilingual as well as their regional sur-
roundings (which we refer as the endogamous nexus, composed
by a cluster of preferential affines). In the cases of Naduhup and
Arawakan groups, nuclear families and villages tend to be
more monolingual, given the fact that affines usually speak
the same language. Given the rules of local exogamy among
Arawakan and Tukanoan groups, there are greater chances
that intermarriage will cross language and dialectal boundaries,
making nuclear families and their residential groups potentially
more multilingual than in the more locally endogamous
Naduhup groups. The endogamous nexus of Naduhup rarely
include individuals speaking different dialects or languages
and contact between distinct regional groups is presumably
not regular and intense. In Arawakan groups, linguistic diver-
sity in the endogamous nexus will be higher at the periphery
of the group’s territory and lower at its centre: for instance,
among the Baniwa in the middle Içana, Baniwa-Koripako is
usually the only spoken language, while at the periphery inter-
marriage and other forms of exchange with people that speak
Kotiria (Wanano), Kubeo and Nheengatu brings greater diver-
sity to social networks [99]. By contrast, in ET groups such as
the Tuyuka, linguistic exogamy is pervasive whether in
groups located at the centre or periphery of the territory
[102]. WT groups are mixed to the extent that while the
Sekoya prefer to intermarry with people living in distant
areas, creating some level of multilingualism and linguistic exo-
gamous marriages [103,104], for the Maihuna 80% of the
intermarriages happen inside the same community in a
12
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affinity
languages differ across affines
languages is the same across affines
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Naduhup Eastern Tukanoan
system much like the Naduhup pattern with exogamous
patrilineal groups and uxorilocality [24].
In linguistic interactions in social spheres beyond the vil-
lage and the endogamous nexus, inter-ethnic communication
often relies on knowledge of socially dominant languages
that serve as linguae francae, whether it has an indigenous
or colonial origin. This marks another kind of asymmetry
among groups concerning their knowledge of and access to
these languages. A forest people person will in general have
knowledge of his/her own language, while some would
know the language of the riverine peoples they most often
exchange goods and services with. Very few actually use Por-
tuguese and Spanish. By contrast, it is not common for riverine
groups to speak the language of forests groups. This sort of
asymmetrical multilingualism is also replicated in the different
forms of inter-ethnic hierarchies. For instance, the language of
locally demographically dominant ET groups, such as the
Tukano, Kubeo and Makuna, serve as indigenous linguae
francae for speakers of Naduhup as well as for smaller ET
languages. Likewise, colonial languages such as Nheengatu
and later Portuguese and Spanish are usually mastered by
indigenous peoples that occupy positions of social and
regional power, such as those working in urban centres,
mission towns, those who have completed elementary edu-
cation, and those who live on or closer to the major rivers.
6. Discussion: language histories and social
histories
In the previous sections, we have presented crucial facts about
the ethnology, historical linguistics and archaeology of the
NWA. Now we can propose a model interconnecting social
histories with language histories at macro and micro scales.
We hope to show the crucial facts explaining how URN has
evolved as a region of language and cultural diversity, intense
inter-ethnic contacts and multilingualism. We will do so by
discussing three major periods during URN history, where
we interpret data from the available archaeological dates and
locations, geographical and phylogenetic distribution of
languages, cultural narratives of mythical or memorial travels,
migrations and other forms of symbolic representation of the
territory. Although it is true that a clear correlation between
 ceramic styles, ethnicities and linguistic families cannot be
always achieved, the changes in the archaeological record
showing the coexistence and/or substitution of ceramic
styles—and other ethnic makers—can be taken as indicators
of different cultural processes and contacts between speakers
of different languages and linguistic families. Here, geography,
relative chronology and the inferences of processes are more
important than actual dating, although it is a welcoming
coincidence that analogical dating of Tukanoan, JC-Arawakan
and Naduhup (see §5.2) fits within the dating of processes vis-
ible in the archaeological record (see §4.2). It is always worth
saying that the temporal boundaries are heuristic devices to
organize information, but they should not conceal a view of
the fluidity and connections between events.
6.1. Initial diversification period (1000 BCE to 0 CE)
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The main hypotheses about the peopling of the URN holds
that Naduhup languages are the only autochthonous to this
zone, while Tukanoan and Arawakan have been brought
from elsewhere. However, we argue this is not entirely cor-
rect, as we understand that temporal and geographical
boundaries of the formation of the social system in the
URN are not restricted to the Upper Rio Negro river basin
and have roots in the last 3000 years of social history in
NWA, in particular around the middle Caquetá-Japurá area,
where major inter-ethnic encounters have taken place, in par-
ticular by the autochthons Tukanoans with speakers of
Arawakan languages. Thus, not only Tukanoan and Arawa-
kan contacts seem to precede Arawakan and Naduhup
contacts, but the URN as a social system started more to
the west than its current geographical location.
Internal diversity and geographical distribution of
Naduhup languages place their initial diversification in the
interfluvial areas between the Apaporis-Japurá and the
Papuri-Vaupés interfluvial zones, where Hup and Yuhup
are located. The internal classification and geographical dis-
tance between the Naduhup languages support this place
of diversification if one sees Naduhup phylogeny from the
perspective of Hup and Yuhup, to whom Nadëb is the
most distantly related language as well as the farthest geogra-
phically, while Dâw is the genetically and geographically
second most distant language.
It is not clear to which Arawakan subgroup JC-Arawakan
branch is more closely related, but according to Arawakan
diaspora models, it is possible that Proto-JC has come from
the East, whether from Central or Lower Amazon, or from
the Upper Rio Negro. There are two prominent models that
try to capture the expansion of JC-Arawakan languages—
one proposed by Vidal [105] and Zucchi [42], and another
by Ramirez [63,95]. They provide antagonistic predictions
to the geographical origin and routes of JC-Arawakan dia-
spora in the NWA. Here we adopt Ramirez’s model
because it is more consistent in phylogenetic terms and is
the only that considers the JC-Arawakan languages from
the lower Caquetá-Japurá.7 Ramirez [63,95] proposes that
speakers of Proto-JC were originally settled in the lower
Caquetá-Japurá, from where they migrated upstream
through the Caquetá and its tributaries (Neta, Apaporis)
reaching the upper tributaries of the Negro, such as the
Vaupés, Içana, Xié, Guainía, and using the Casiquiare chan-
nel to reach the Upper Orinoco. The most ancient indication
to the presence of Arawakan languages in the Japurá is the
appearance of Pocó ceramics around the Amanã site by 13
2790 ± 30 BP [66], in a second layer of human occupation,
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which matches Heckenberger’s [34] temporal window of Ara-
wakan’s initial diaspora. Although Ramirez suggests a
possible link between the Japurá ceramics from Mangueiras
site to the arrival of Proto-JC, there are undefinitions regard-
ing the dating of this event, as Mangueiras and the nearby La
Pedrera site show initial dates varying from more than 1000
BCE for Arroyo-Kalin et al. [72] to 500 CE for Reichel Von
Hildebrand [106]. In any event, if we assume the most conser-
vative dates, Japurá sites seem to represent both an area to
which Arawakan languages were brought to as well as a
zone where new diversification processes took place.
The distribution of Tukanoan languages and the internal
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diversity of the family suggest the middle Caquetá as an area
of initial diversification into PWT and PET. In its upper tribu-
taries (Caguán, Orteguaza), one finds only WT languages
(Koreguahe and Tama). In more downriver locations, in the
lower Apaporis and its mouth with the Caquetá, one finds
a group of closely related ET languages (Tanimuka, Letuama
and Yahuna) and a language with an ambiguous classifi-
cation as WT or ET, Koretu (see discussion in §2 of the
electronic supplementary material). The geographical gap
between WT and ET-speaking peoples currently cover
almost 500 km, which seems to be true since at least pre-colo-
nial times [24].8 This suggests that the Caquetá is an axis
separating Tukanoan languages in two clades: WT, located
in more upriver and western locations, and ET, located in
more downriver and eastern locations. The mid-point of
this axis lies around the area of Araracuara, Abeja and Peña
Roja sites, suggesting that speakers of Proto-Tukanoan can
be related to historical processes visible in the archaeological
records of this region. It is worth noting that the Camani and
Méidote ceramics found in this area are contemporary with
the Pocó-Açutuba, Incised-Rim Traditions and Polychrome
traditions, evidencing the existence of an occupation and a
singular socio-cultural process existing before and during
the great macro-processes of the Amazon valley. This goes
in favour of the hypothesis that this region was occupied
by Proto-Tukanoan groups (among others). Other evidence
that supports this idea comes from the reconstructions of
PT and PET [94] which suggest that palm trees and cultivated
plants of great nutritional and ritual importance among the
ET, such as Mauritia flexuosa, Euterpe precatória, Oenocarpus
batava, Araeceae sp., Manihot. sp., Theobroma sp., Capsicum
sp., etc., were already part of the food repertoire before the
separation of the two branches. Archaeobotanical evidence
from Peña Roja confirms the management of some of these
palm trees since the early Holocene, as well as the terras
pretas of the Abeja site show the presence of Manihot sp.
around 5.5 BP, and those from Araracuara contain samples
of Manihot, Capsicum, Euterpe in 790 CE [107].
The mobility and demographic patterns in the initial
diversification period seem to suggest important asymme-
tries across the families. Arawakan languages could have
been spoken by peoples that were experiencing greater popu-
lation growth and were able to migrate longer distances
[51,108]. Thus, it is possible that during this initial period,
Arawakan presented greater dynamics of language diversifi-
cation triggered by population growth and migration. The
other groups had shorter mobility patterns and small popu-
lation growth; their populations and languages spread in a
slower pace, creating dialect continua and zones with weak

linguistic families
Arawakan
Kakwa-Nukak
Naduhup
Tukanoan
Witotoan
Boran
Kariban
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Figure 4. Initial diversification zones of major families and earliest archaeological sites in the Northwest Amazon.
contacts. Tukanoan could differ from the Naduhup slightly
by the fact that the former seems to have had greater knowl-
edge of horticulture and perhaps material culture (compare
Chacon [94] and Epps [13]).
The linguistic stratigraphy of this initial diversification
period reinforces the hypothesis that Naduhup, Arawakan
and Tukanoan were spoken in different settings. When ana-
lysing the validity of the alleged ‘Maku’ linguistic family,
Epps & Bolaños [14] noticed that phonotactic similarities
across Naduhup, Kakwa-Nukak and Puinave, along with
other potential cases of borrowings could be explained as
more ancient contacts among these languages, which exclude
Tukanoan and Arawakan languages. As for Tukanoan, there
are a few etymologies uniquely shared with Boran and
Witotoan languages (which must have happened in the
middle Caquetá) as well as with languages located further
north from the URN (see electronic supplementary material
and Chacon [86]). These etyma suggest contacts prior to
and certainly independently from Arawakan presence in
the region. At the same time, there are no comparable etymol-
ogies in the same period across Tukanoan and Naduhup
languages, supporting again the hypothesis of a Tukanoan
and Naduhup contact only at a more recent period. Currently,
no people who speak a Tukanoan language live near Arara-
cuara, but in the conception of territoriality by the ET
groups from southern locations, such as the Makuna,
Letuama and Tanimuka, Araracuara is the western limit of
their territory [22]. Those who currently live at Araracuara
are speakers of Witotoan, Nonuya, Muinane, Bora, Miraña,
Andoke, Resígaro and Carijona languages.
Thus, in this model, the Caquetá-Japurá is an important
centre of linguistic and cultural diversification in the NWA,
where, since the Middle Holocene, we find terras pretas and
the presence of maize and manioc. In the Late Holocene,
the Camani and Amanã ceramic phases, respectively in the
middle and lower Caquetá, predate the appearance of the
most important ceramic traditions of the Amazon Basin.
The overlap of Camani and Méidote after fifth century AD
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might be indicative of ethnic diversity in the Caquetá, sup-
porting the idea of multilingual configurations before
Arawakan expansion in this zone figure 4.
6.2. Expansions (0 CE to 1000 CE)
This period is characterized by the major expansion of Arawa-
kan languages and a turning point in ET and Naduhup
languages concerning their inter-ethnic relations with
Arawakan speakers. JC-Arawakan expansion was based on a
series of radiation processes leading to the formation of the
four main geographical clusters of languages: Kauishanic,
Yukunic, Achagua-Piapoco, Baniwa-Koripako-Tariana-Man-
dawaka-Warekena. The Kauishanic territory represents the
first area of diversification. Proto-Nuclear-JC (PNJC) emerged
from this setting and its split is associated with an upriver
expansion into the Caquetá. The territory of the Yukunic cluster
seems to be a second area of radiation: while some languages
remained close to this area (Yukuna, Resígaro, Wainuma,
Mariate, Kabiyari), others migrated (Achagua-Piapoco and the
northeastern JC-Arawakan languages [Baniwa-Koripako,
Tariana, Mandawaka, Warekena]). Ramirez [63] observes that
Kabiyari occupies an ambiguous position in its relationship
with languages further south (such as Yukuna and Resígaro)
and further north (such as Baniwa-Koripako or Piapoco). This
relationship mirrors Bourgue’s [109] comments on trade networks
between the Yukuna, Kabiyari and Baniwa-Koripako, which
shows how Arawakan expansion was likely based on the main-
tenance of social ties among geographically distant groups.
The upriver movement of PNJC into the Caquetá correlates
with the appearance of ceramics such as Nofurei and others
influenced by the Amazonian polychrome tradition (see Cer-
amic traditions and ethnographic areas). This means that
since at least 700 CE the middle Caquetá would have been
going through deep social changes, with new forms of inter-
action between speakers of Arawakan and local societies,
such as Tukanoan, Boran and Witotoan. The limit of Arawakan
expansion seems to be the rapids of Araracuara or a bit more

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Figure 5. Expansion of Arawakan, Tukanoan and Naduhup languages.
upriver, judging from the toponymy with a probable Arawa-
kan origin for the Yari River (where -ri appears as the class
term for hydronyms in several Arawakan languages). Upriver
from the Yari, toponyms are predominantly Tukanoan, like the
rivers Sunsiya, Macaya and Camuya (where the class term for
river is the morpheme -ya). This suggests a zone of inter-ethnic
contacts and boundaries between Tukanoan and Arawakan
diaspora. A short time after settling in the middle Caquetá-
Japurá, some Arawakan languages continued the diaspora
towards north and northeast. 9 They moved into areas that
are archaeologically poorly investigated. These groups have
the rapids of Hiipana (or Uapuí) as their mythical place of
emergence. The Piapoco recount how they have migrated
from the Içana to the Guaviare, along with the ancestral of
the Achagua.10 Therefore, there is both mythical and linguistic
evidence showing that JC-Arawakan languages have an expan-
sive trajectory distinct from the Arawakan languages spoken
along the Rio Negro and Orinoco.
Concerning Tukanoan mobility, it seems probable that
some groups moved into the Yari and Apaporis, and others
to upper Caquetá and Putumayo, while a few stayed closer
to the initial diversification zone, creating a linkage from
the Putumayo up to the Apaporis. In fact, from colonial infor-
mation, we know of persisting contact routes between WT
groups (Koreguahe and Okoguahe) and ET groups via the
upper Vaupés-Yari-Caquetá [24]. This indicates that contacts
between branches of the family would have occurred until
recent times and that the idea of a sharp east versus west
split is untenable. Under this more scalar view of the
WT and ET split, it is possible that Arawakan influence on
Tukanoan had started by the time Proto-Tukanoan or its
earliest daughter languages were still spoken. Rather than
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linguistic families
Arawakan
Kakwa-Nukak
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Naduhup
Tukanoan
Witotoan
Boran
Kariban
sites
widespread loans or wanderwörten, some of the shared
etyma are uniquely found across Arawakan and Tukanoan,
which suggests that their relations were particularly intense,
as well as unique. There are a few lexical etymologies
shared between Tukanoan and JC-Arawakan languages
located in distant places that support the expansion models
proposed in this section. In the same way, a few etymologies
have crosscutting isoglosses in Arawakan and Tukanoan
languages of the Caquetá-Japurá and Apaporis, suggesting
a diversification zone. Other etymologies show different bor-
rowing events across WT and ET languages, suggesting they
were acquired after the initial diversification of Tukanoan
(see §4.1.2 in electronic supplementary material).
The dispersion of Dâw and Nadëb to locations further east
of Naduhup homeland correlates with the fact that these
languages have been the most affected by Arawakan loans,
while languages further in the west, Hup and Yuhup, were
more directly influenced by Tukanoan [110].11 It is clear, then,
that Arawakan loans happened after the split of Nadëb and
Dâw, but it is not clear when this happened and which Arawa-
kan groups had mostly influenced Dâw and Nadëb (given the
JC-Arawakan expansion model, and the earliest colonial
sources [28], it was probably Mepuri [from the Kauishanic
cluster], Baré and Manao [from the Medio-Rio-Negro and
Negro-Roraima branches]) figure 5.
6.3. URN consolidation (1000 CE to 1600 CE)
The transition from Camani to Nofurei can be interpreted as
part of a major event unfolded into a series of process contri-
buting to a stronger Arawakization of ET speaking groups
and their movement into the Vaupés. Such processes must

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Figure 6. URN consolidation with the arrival of Kariban languages, and Tukanoan and Tariana movement into the Vaupés.
be understood within the context of ethnic and social
negotiations between Tukanoan and Arawakan, which
eventually led to inter-ethnic alliances, ritual exchanges,
linguistic exogamy and multilingualism. One major process
resulting from these events are the higher rates of language
diversification in ET and especially in Tukanoid languages.
In the light of what we have seen, these result from a conflu-
ence of factors, mainly: (1) major increase of population
after changes in subsistence strategies; (2) the development
of a decentralized hierarchical social organization of clans,
coupled with patrilineality and patri/virilocality, favouring
social segmentation and splits; (3) building of alliances with
Arawakans, which makes explicit the alignment of language
boundaries with the boundaries of the exogamous group,
creating the basis for the system of linguistic exogamy.
That language diversification and inter-ethnic contacts
with Arawakans are related processes is supported by a
number of changes in ET languages that are not particularly
shared with WT. Chacon [94] analyses the process of lexical
and semantic innovations in Tukanoan and has showed
that ET groups have gradually specialized in bitter manioc
agriculture, sedentary riverine lifeways, and other forms of
cultural life more similar to Arawakan groups. At the same
time, there are several cases of Arawakan contact-induced
changes into ET languages only, setting them apart from
WT, which had much less influence from Arawakan (§4 of
electronic supplementary material and [110]). Concerning lex-
ical borrowings, some of them are semantically particularly
significant as their meanings can illustrate the cultural
domains that contributed both to the Arawakization of ET
and its differentiation from WT languages.
If Tukanoans movement into the Vaupés occurred between
the social processes visible in the replacement of Camani by
Nofurei and the arrival of the Carijona, this would place the
16
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linguistic families
Arawakan
Kakwa-Nukak
Naduhup
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Tukanoan
Witotoan
Boran
Kariban
sites
migratory events between 1200 BP and 500 BP, making the
Tukanoan presence in the Vaupés pre-colonial. The main argu-
ment for an analysis that Tukanoans entrance into the Vaupés
happened after the transition from Camani to Nofurei comes
from chain of borrowings from Arawakan to ET and then to
Hup and Yuhup as reported by Epps [110], who also notices
that Tukanoan loans usually have quite specific donors
(mainly Tukano) and recipients (mainly Hup and Yuhup,
while in Dâw, Tukanoan loans are minimal and non-existent
in Nadëb). This means that Tukanoan and Naduhup contacts
were late relatively to the split of Tukanoid. Another important
event related to ET movement into the Vaupés is the arrival of
the Carijona. As Franco [6] analyses it, the toponymy of the ter-
ritory where the Carijona are located is filled with terms of
Tukanoan and Witotoan origins, which shows that Kariban
groups could have replaced certain Tukanoan groups, leading
to later movements into the Vaupés, and reducing contacts
between ET and WT.
It seems that there was more than one Tukanoan wave and
the penetration into the main course of the Vaupés was gradual
and through different routes. The internal classification of ET
languages suggests at least three waves: a pioneering one by
the Tukanoid subgroup, who experienced the greatest radiation,
followed by Desano-Siriano-Yupua, and then by Kubeo. ET
groups that did not make their way into the Vaupés remained
in the western and southern periphery, namely Makuna-Bara-
sana and Tanimuka-Letuama-Yahuna. As ET groups moved
to new territories, they eventually became integrated into cer-
tain zones of regional power in close contact with an
Arawakan-speaking group. Therefore, nowadays, for every ET
clade there is one geographically close Arawakan language
and a history of bilateral contacts; hence, for Tanimuka-
Letuama-Yahuna there is Yukuna; for Makuna-Barasana,
Kabiyari; for Kubeo, Baniwa; for Tukanoid, Tariana.
 ET mythical journey narratives to the Vaupés represent a 17
process that makes reference both to mobility and social

colonial languages: Nheengatu, Portuguese, Spanish

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spread of colonial languages, first as lingua franca,
transformations. First, they always present from down-river
to up-river locations along special places where social
groups and cultural features emerged. Implicit in the down-
river to up-river displacement is an inherent east to west tra-

major events of language extinction

similar techniques, different styles

jectory, since downstream locations in the Amazon Basin tend
to be more eastwards than the headwater locations. We also

then as first language

understand that the geographical reference in these myths
refer more to an ideological model of social, political and ter-

1600 CE–present
ritorial organization than to actual paths of a demic

new social order

national states
migration.12 Concerning social transformations, they make

depopulation
displacement
colonial
reference to the emergence of a new social order, one which
is based on inter-ethnic relations, language diversification,

Interface Focus 13: 20220050

multilingualism and linguistic exogamy. In most ET narra-
tives, there is usually an epiphanic moment in a given place
of mythical transformations in the Upper Rio Negro,
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known as Dia Wi’i ‘house of the waters’ in most narratives.

In a ritual accompanied by the drinking of the hallucinogenic

ET radiation by population movement and

drink ayawaska/yajé (see lexical homologies related to this

Arawakan and Tukanoan hybridization

word in the electronic supplementary material), the new
humanity recognized themselves as part of social units

ethnogenesis in the Vaupés

ET groups enter the Vaupés
related by kinship and affinity, and each group went through

ET and Naduhup contacts

Tariana into the Vaupés

Amazonian Polychrome
a process of ethnic birth by receiving distinctive markers such

URN consolidation
as special kinds of chants, facial paintings, feather ornaments,

Carijona into URN

1000 CE–1600 CE

new social order

basketry designs, and crucially, languages. By contrast, an
analysis of the Baniwa myths of creation shows that speaking

Nofurei
a common language is a defining feature since the creation of
the current phratries. Language diversification is seen as a
result of the replication of the Arawakan model of society fol-
lowing demographic growth and geographical expansion

Arawakan diversification promoted by expansion

Arawakan influence on Tukanoan and Naduhup

(see also Hill [23], Vidal [30,101]).
While it is true that we see a continuation of linguistic

Japurá, Caiambé, Amazonian Polychrome

exchange since the time of PT and its earliest daughter
languages, the inter-ethnic relations between Arawakans
and Tukanoans changed over time: (1) from Arawakan-dom-
Nadëb and Dâw moving east

inance in the expansion period (2) to more egalitarian and

Arawakan into Caquetá

multilateral relations in the consolidation period, and, even-

and ethnogenesis

Arawakization of ET

Camani > Nofurei

tually, (3) to situations where Arawakan languages became
ET and WT drift
0 CE–1000 CE

less dominant, leading to the ‘Tukanization of Arawakan’

expansions

during the colonial period. The history of Tariana illustrates

well the transition from (2) to (3): since its arrival in the
Vaupés probably by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
Tariana contacts with Tukanoan have been analysed as egali-
tarian, with no dominance of any particular language (see
also §4.2.2). However, as a result of changes during the colo-
slow processes of drift and diversification
proto-Tukanoan (middle Caquetá-Japurá)

contacts with languages closer to initial

nial period, Tukano and then Portuguese became more

proto-JC (lower Caquetá-Japurá river)

dominant in the region, causing more unilateral changes

Table 3. Synthesis of URN linguistic and cultural history.

proto-Naduhup (Vaupés river)

into Tariana [77] (see also the situation of Resígaro with

respect to Bora [111,112]). As consequences of colonial disrup-
initial diversification

diversification zones

tion of indigenous social systems, one may also consider the

Camani (Caquetá)

several cases of language shift of Arawakan speaking groups

1000 BCE–0 CE

Pocó (Japurá)

to emerging locally dominant indigenous languages, such as

Baniwa speakers shifting to Nheengatu or Kubeo [84,89],
Tariana to Tukano [77] and a possible Arawakan speaking
group to Tanimuka [87,90,91] (figure 6).
language diversification
approximate dates

language contact
proto-languages

7. Conclusion
We provided an overview of ethnicity and linguistic diversity in
ceramics

the NWA and URN regions, discussed the evidence from

archaeology concerning the long-term development of key
 social, cultural and political aspects of URN’s societies in con-
nection to other areas in NWA, Central Amazonia and
Orinoco, and analysed the main evidence explaining different
patterns of language diversification and language contact. As
a result, we proposed an integrated model that about the
where, the when and the how of the main events and processes
of diversification and inter-ethnic contacts that have built
URN social systems. In broad strokes, we showed that the peo-
pling of the NWA and URN are dependent both on population
movements and the development of social and cultural forms
of differentiation in inter-ethnic relations, which sustained mul-
tilingualism and promoted language diversification.
Some of the current characteristics of the URN regional
system, such as multilingualism and hierarchy, have clear
archaeological correlations. Archaeological evidence for hier-
archical structures is robust in Central Amazonia starting
from 400 CE. The coexistence of various ceramic phases, in
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different time periods, both in Central Amazonia and in
lower and middle Caquetá-Japurá, evidence early interactions
between speakers of different linguistic families since at least
1000 BCE. This allows us to weave some hypotheses about
the different stages that led to the constitution of the URN
regional system. We have also highlighted the role of middle
Caquetá-Japurá as a zone sustaining multilingual language
ecologies prior to Arawakan arrival in the region, as well as
the main initial area where Arawakization of Tukanoans and
Tukanization of Arawakans might have taken place. The
broad findings and the different threads analysed from this
paper are summarized in table 3.
The interdisciplinary approach that we have used to for-
mulate a plausible model for the formation of the URN
regional system is an attempt to bring together information
from different disciplines, combining quantitative and
qualitative methods. The resulting interpretations of each dis-
cipline do not always help to produce a linear story but
suggest possible correlations. To perfect this model, it is
still necessary that we have greater archaeological knowledge
about this vast region, more historical linguistic research and,
particularly in the Vaupés, more population genetic studies.
Data accessibility. Original datasets used in this study are available in a
publicly accessible repository. These data can be found here: https://
zenodo.org/record/7293757#.Y21qWuyZPzf [113]. In addition, all
other original contributions presented in the study are included in
the article main text or in the electronic supplementary material
[114]; further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Authors’ contributions. L.C.: conceptualization, funding acquisition,
investigation, methodology, project administration, writing—original
draft, writing—review and editing; T.C.: conceptualization, data
curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, method-
ology, project administration, software, visualization, writing—
original draft, writing—review and editing.
All authors gave final approval for publication and agreed to be
held accountable for the work performed therein.
Conflict of interest declaration. We declare we have no competing interests.
Funding. This research was partially funded by the Brazilian National
Council for Research (CNPq) from a grant to L.C. since 2019, and by
the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies with a scholarship to T.C.
from September 2021 to June 2022.
Acknowledgements. We wish to thank colleagues in the workshop Multi-
disciplinary approaches to Amazonian prehistory, held at the 2021
Annual Meeting of the Sociedade para a Antropologia das Terras
Baixas da América do Sul (SALSA). We also present our gratitude for
the organizers of the workshop and of this volume: Nicholas
Q. Emlen, Leonardo Arias and Rik van Gijn. We specially thank
two anonymous reviewers whose comments and critiques truly
helped us improve the paper in this final version.
Endnotes 18
1
Alphabetical list of abbreviations used in this paper: BCE: Before
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsfs
Common Era, BP: Years Before Present (calibrated), CE: Common
Era, DANE : Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística,
ET: Eastern Tukanoan, INEI : Instituto Nacional de Estadística e
Informática, ISA: Instituto Socioambiental, IWGIA: International
Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, JC: Japurá-Colombia, NET:
Nuclear Eastern Tukanoan, NJC: Nuclear Japurá-Colombia, NWA:
Northwest Amazonia, PD: Phylogenetic Diversity, PET: Proto-East-
ern-Tukanoan, PJC: Proto-Japurá-Colombia, PNET: Proto- Nuclear-
Eastern-Tukanoan, PNJC: Proto- Nuclear-Japurá-Colombia, PT:
Proto-Tukanoan, PWT: Proto-Western-Tukanoan, URN: Upper Rio
Negro, WT: Western Tukanoan.
2
The term ‘cluster’ is used to avoid the idea that these group of
languages from a genetic subgroup.
3
Until recently, the Naduhup and Kakwa-Nukak linguistic families
Interface Focus 13: 20220050
were classified within a single family: Makú-Puinave. Works by
Patience Epps and Katherine Bolaños [11–14] argue that the first
classifications were built from a few terms and superficial compari-
sons, and that the notion of “Maku” is not valid from a linguistic
perspective. They suggest instead a more conservative classification.
4
In Chiribiquete (located in the middle of the Apaporis River) cul-
tural activity has outstandingly early dates at around 20 000 BCE,
with remains associated with hearths with ocher and charred
seeds, as well as other direct dates associated with lithic materials
and remains of fauna and flora dating back to 5500 BCE. In La Lin-
dosa, there are also initial dates around 20 000 BCE, although the
most solid ones are located at 10 600 BCE. At the Peña Roja site in
the middle of Caquetá, pre-ceramic occupations dating back almost
to 9000 BCE have been identified. On the lower Rio Negro, the
Dona Stella site has an occupation dated to 8500 BCE.
5
The Japurá-Caquetá River is known as Japurá in Brazil and as
Caquetá in Colombia. We will use this terminological distinction to
facilitate geographical referencing. When used alone, ‘Japurá’ river
shall refer to Lower Caquetá-Japurá, and ‘Caquetá’ river to the
Middle and Upper Caquetá-Japurá.
6
According to Nettle [93] and Gavin [94], common measurements of
linguistic diversity include the number of languages within a particu-
lar area or linguistic family (also known as language richness or
density), the number of linguistic families within a particular area
(also known as family richness or density), the degree of internal
differences concerning linguistic features (also known as linguistic
disparity), and the phylogenetic diversity, which calculates the mini-
mum path in a tree (the sum all branch lengths) connecting any set of
languages.
7
The model proposed by Vidal [30] is based on her analysis of the
mythology of many NJC-Arawakan groups that relate their origins
to the rapids of Hípana in the Aiari river, such as the Baniwa-
Koripako, the Warekena, the Kabiyarí, the Yukuna and also the
Baré, a group of the Negro-Roraima branch of the Arawakan
family. Each group that emigrated from this location have a second-
ary place of birth of its own. The Kabiyarí and Yukuna place of birth
are found in the rapids of Araracuara and Cupatí (La Pedrera).
8
Judging from the maps produced by Bellier [24] which show that the
Caquetá and Putumayo were occupied by several WT speaking
peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with no
evidence for ET speaking peoples in this zone.
9
It is still not clear, though, to which specific branch of JC-Arawakan
languages this ceramic phase could be directly related. One possi-
bility is that it represents the initial spread of PNJC. Another
possibility is that it represents the arrival of the Yukunic cluster in
the area. Unfortunately, for both scenarios we still need more solid
evidence from the internal classification of JC-Arawakan languages
10
The migration of the Achagua-Piapoco was well summarized from
an ethnological point of view by Vidal [30], who analysed the mythi-
cal narratives of the Piapoco and indicated that the ancestors of these
groups left the Içana, went up the Vaupés from where they crossed to
the upper Guaviare and from there to the Alto Orinoco and the
Llanos Orientales. This path can also be represented in the archaeo-
logical record, such as the population growth in the Upper Orinoco
with the arrival of the Piapoco and the archaeological sites of Gran-
ada and Manacacias [59,72], which corresponds to the routes
mentioned in the mythical history of the Piapoco. Similar to Nofurei,
Granada was classified as part of the Amazon Polychrome tradition,
 12
which, according to Mora (1989: 192 fn 6) is supported by its chron- Up-river and down-river perspectives exist as a manifestation of 19
ology and its decorative style (white, red and black painting with internal hierarchy among clans, with higher clans occupying more
complex geometric designs). downriver positions [7,78]. In a macro-regional perspective, down-

11
The lexical pattern of cross-family similarities and differences seems
to be supported by structural typological features as well: Hup and
Yuhup are more similar to Tukanoan, while Nadëb, to Arawakan,
and Dâw more or less in the middle [110].
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsfs
river positions refer to places in lower Caquetá-Japurá, Central
Amazon, Amazon Delta and Rio de Janeiro. They represent places
pf temporal and geographical references of inter-ethnic contacts as
well as a time when humanity was not differentiated.

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