Talk:Kumeyaay people

Untitled

I moved this from Kumeyaay-Digueno because that's a clumsy title and the Spanish name is misspelled too. (Diegueño) Willmcw 09:26, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The bit about the three bands warrants some discussion; I will not edit the article directly at this point because I don't have access to my source material. The term "band" as used by the Kumeyaay refers to very small geographical areas, often a single reservation, such as the Barona Band of the Kumeyaay, who run the Barona Casino. The major divisions of the Kumeyaay that I am aware of were the Tipai, Ipai, and Paipai -- somewhere I read that the names mean "the folks up there", "the folks here", and "the folks down there" -- but I suspect that these divisions are really historical and do not reflect conditions of the present day. Those who live in the Mexicali Valley (what I believe is meant by the reference to the Sonoran Desert and Yuma) are called Cucapah; I am not familiar with the name "Kamia" although I have seen "Kamiai" used as a variant spelling for Kumeyaay. r/s RMBiddle (not yet a registered user)

May a native Kumeyaay Indian add the pronunciation of this name. Is it Kumeya-ay? --217.11.17.251 (talk) 15:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

History

There's no credible evidence to support the claims either that "Evidence of human settlment in Kumeyaay territory goes back at least 20,000 years" or that "A proto-Tipai-Ipai culture emerged by 5000 BCE." There is a solid basis for saying that evidence of human behavior in this region goes back at least 12,000 years, and there's a culture recognizably ancestral to Tipai/Kumeyaay/Ipai culture by at least 1000 CE. Rhyme3 (talk) 03:27, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The information was cited by a reliable, secondary source. If you disagree with the information, instead of deleting it, find a more recent, more scholarly source that supports your views. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Uyvsdi

The problem is that it's a lot easier to just stick in unsubstantiated things like this than to present a full discussion of what we actually do and don't know. The idea that local settlement goes back "at least 20,000 years" comes from the experimental technique of amino acid racemization dating in the 1970s that was totally discredited (even in the views of its original proponent) in the 1980s. We don't know when the first human settlement appeared. Certainly it was at least 12,000 years ago, and it might have been substantially earlier than that, but there's no solid evidence (yet). For a scholarly discussion of the problem, see Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, 2007, California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity.

With regard to a "proto-Tipai-Ipai culture" emerging around 5000 BCE, this is a completely undefined and nebulous concept. I know the literature on the subject rather well, and I've never even seen this suggested, much less defined, within a scholarly context.

If the aim is to build a soundly informative, up-to-date online encyclopedia, then blindly sticking in outdated 30+ year old misinformation and rejecting attempts to correct it doesn't seem to be the best way to go. Rhyme3 (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

You've actually furnished a citation, so problem solved. -Uyvsdi (talk) 00:05, 22 May 2010 (UTC)Uyvsdi