The roots of group feeling and group identity have to be looked for at very basic levels in evolved human psychology and perhaps even further back in patterns of group behaviour in animals. The nation state has shown astonishing power to survive universalist ideologies and also to resist the strong forces working towards globalisation of the world economy and of world culture. In the same way as once it was said that 'presbyter is old priest writ large' one might say that 'nation is group writ large'. There are common elements between a society and Society but the forces promoting or constituting the unity of the national group may differ significantly from those supporting the unity, the identity, of the smaller group. What seems to be most noticeable in the national group, in the present revival of nationalism, is the importance of language as the foundation of nation identity. If language, and languages, are essentially biological and not simply cultural phenomena, then it may be possible to understand more fully how the national idea retains its force, and indeed to start to think of the nation in its turn as an evolutionary grouping. The work of Cavalli-Sforza and his associates at Stanford on the correlations between world linguistic and genetic distributions seems relevant.

Whilst a great deal has been written about the nation, the state, national identity, group identity and individual identity, there seems to have been rather little research attempting to link individual, group and nation identity. The apparently most relevant previous work is William Bloom's study "Personal identity, national identity and international relations" published in 1990 However on examination this proves rather disappointing apart from preliminary definitions such as ""National Identity .. that paradigm condition in which a mass of people have made the same identification with the national symbols - have internalised the symbols of the nation - so that they may act as one psychological group when there is a threat to, or the possibility of the enhancement of, these symbols of national identity" (52) and the observation that "the nation-state into which the infant is born as citizen is in a state of permanent competition with its international environment. other countries are competitors in the great international game". (74) He has nothing to say about the evolutionary source of human societal tendencies or in depth about the relation between individual psychology (evolutionary psychology) and the psychological underpinning of attachment to "the nation". He concludes where perhaps one would have expected him to start by saying on the last page: "We can ask for a more profound understanding of human psychology". (162)

This is what recently evolutionary biologists have attempted to tackle; they have produced the now well-publicised theoretical approach of Evolutionary Psychology. Whilst obviously, if one accepts human evolution, human psychology must have evolved as part of human development, the specific propositions advanced and defended by the proponents of Evolutionary Psychology as a theory are not altogether satisfactory. Evolutionary Psychology (as expounded by Cosmides, Tooby, Symons, Buss, Barkow and others) contends that all manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, special purpose learning devices, domain-specific modules, which evolved by natural selection because they solved adaptive problems confronting small bands of hunter-gatherers on the African savannas in the EEA, the era of evolutionary adaptedness in the Pleistocene. Despite the confidence and fluency with which these ideas have been presented, there are unanswered criticisms. Knowledge of the hypothesised EEA environments is scant. Evolutionary psychology turns into a speculative search for reasons why a behaviour that may harm us now must once have originated for adaptive purposes. The implication is that humans are exclusively a bundle of pleistocene adaptations. There is plenty that went on before and much that went on after. Central aspects of human evolutionary psychology go back long before the Palaeolithic. Basic plans for perception, movement and thought were evolved long before then. Evolutionary Psychology has perhaps been led astray by taking the Chomskyan language theories (modularity and Universal Grammar) as the paradigm for analysing other forms of human behaviour. A much better starting point for those who do not accept EP as presently formulated would be Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, tracing behavioural and emotional structures in modern humans much further back. We should consider human evolutionary psychology in the light of behaviour patterns not only of primates but also of a range of other social animals.

Animal group behaviour

For a deeper understanding of human group psychology one may reasonably, as already suggested, start by looking more closely at the behaviour (psychology) of pre-human social groups. Much has been written and much research undertaken into the behaviour and social organisation of primates but it is open to question whether the apes, the gibbons, the orangutans, gorillas and even chimpanzees are the most instructive creatures to study. More may be learnt from considering some less closely related, more actively social and unfortunately less attractive animals:

Rats

From Lorenz (referring to Steiniger's work) and Eibl-Eibesfeldt it appears that aspects of rat behaviour include collective aggression of one community against another; massacres ensue if a human experimenter tries to mix two colonies; constant warfare between large neighbouring families of rats must exert a huge selection pressure in the direction of an ever-increasing ability to fight; a rat-clan which cannot keep up in this respect must soon fall victim to extermination. Lorenz comments: "Man's social organisation is very similar to that of rats which,like humans, are social and peaceful beings within their clans, but veritable devils towards all fellow-members of their species not belonging to their own community".

Hyenas

Hyenas are more closely related to cats than dogs, the closest relatives being mongooses and meerkats. Hyenas live by a matriarchal ranking system in social units called "clans," which can comprise up to 100 individuals. Each clan "owns" a small stretch of plains, known as their territorial hunting grounds. In Ngorongoro Crater, Africa's densest hyena population (approximately 450 adults and their offspring), 7 different clans of 35 to 80 hyenas ferociously defend their sections averaging 12 square miles of the 100 square miles crater floor against their neighbours; adult hyenas of the same clan do not normally kill and eat each other. Females not only dominate males at kills and other favoured sites but also lead clan members on pack hunts, boundary patrols, and into battle. Long gestation results in unusually precocious offspring. Newborns already have milk incisors and canines; only hours after birth, siblings of like sex battle for dominance; fighting occurs in the cubs' narrow tunnels where mothers are powerless to intervene; the worst fighting is between two sisters in the same litter; as soon as she can, the stronger female will kill the weaker; this sibling rivalry kills an estimated 25% of all hyenas in their first month. The cubs of a low-ranking mother may have to nurse up to a year and a half. Hyenas are among the most vociferous African mammals, with 11 different, intergrading calls: groans and soft squeals; whoop contact call, fast whoop rallying call - when a female calls, her relatives and offspring react immediately; lowing voiced by hyenas kept waiting at a kill; grunting; giggling with intense fear or excitement; growling threatening to bite; yelling attempting to escape attackers; rattling growl by hyenas on kill at approach of a lion.

Ants

Ants recognise each other as participants of the same society by chemical markers which are learnt in development during a sensitive phase shortly after hatching. They acquire their communication system by shared upbringing, the culture of the nest (as also do bees). Many eusocial hymenopterans can recognize nest-mates; a bee learns the genotypes of other bees in its colony, and accepts them as nest-mates, but does not know its own genotype. There is no convincing evidence that eusocial insects can distinguish lineages within a colony. Individual ants can survive and transmit genes only as part of a social group: the same is effectively true of humans. (Maynard Smith and Szathmary). The closer insects are to each other in physical form and habits, the more likely they are to be enemies; the most dangerous foes of ants are other ants; cannibalistic ants tend to pick their meals from those who most resemble themselves. Ants with effective means of communication within the group are in a position to react to events external to the group with a group-reaction.

Baboons

Baboons at the turn of the century outnumbered people in Africa and they are still the most populous monkeys on the continent. The baboon has the most powerful jaws of all apes, except perhaps for the gorilla. Troops range from very small (10 or so) to very large; savanna groups can reach 150 individuals, and forest groups of as many as 300 have been seen. The group is organized around females and their tight-knit families. Gelada females only have one infant every two years; the babies enjoy the undivided attention of their mothers for two years. Gelada baboon vocalizations include at least 22 acoustically different vocal patterns which include "moan", "grunt", "vocalized yawn", "vibrato moan", "yelp", "hnn pant", "staccato cough", "snarl", "scream", "aspirated pant" and "low bark".

A few points to note from these brief descriptions of social animals. The groups are linked by common descent; the functioning of the group depends on the extensive communicative abilities of members of the group, vocal communication in the case of hyenas and baboons, chemical and tactile in the case of ants. Recent Russian research suggests that ants can communicate detailed environmental information by antenna contact. These various social animals are remarkably successful in their different environments; baboons operating in groups have survived and flourished in comparison with more solitary primates such as gorillas and orangutans. These social animals are often at war with each other over territory and are also formidable in their defence against and attacks on other animals. Within the groups there can be savage strife but without destroying effective cohesion of the group against external threats. These are examples of effective pre-language groupings based on common descent and shared territory but with communication facilities which make possible group unity and identity. Common descent (genetic similarity) clearly does not mean that all is sweetness and light within the group or population but that the group is capable of responding effectively to external threats and also securing survival of the group against internal stress. The human predisposition to group formation and group behaviour can be seen as an aspect of the general evolution of social groupings.

Human group behaviour

There seems no reason to suppose that the characteristics of groups formed by the precursors of homo sapiens or early man would have been much different. Group behaviour for them would have been determined by the environment, living and non-living in which the groups operated. The readiness to form groups, both for the social animals listed and for early man, no doubt had its origin in the proto-family, the mutual dependence of the members of the family, emphasised by the long gestation and development periods of human infants. Human cultural/genetic evolution has come to take the form of natural selection of the group, survival of the fittest group; war developed as a cultural mechanism in the competition of groups (pseudospeciation) for space and raw materials; there is evidence of armed conflict as early as the Palaeolithic period (Eibl-Eibesfeldt) The group or supergroup is an instrument of survival, for protection against other groups or supergroups.

"Groupism" then as a primary human behavioural pattern is the readiness to form groups round any observed or imagined differences in bodily or mental characteristics; almost anything will serve: proximity, language, age, sexual inclination, skin colour, eye and hair colour, shared historical or individual experience, metaphysical beliefs, shared descent - even apparently trivial interests such as StarTrek, soccer, basketball or baseball teams, real ale. Those who consider themselves similar in some respect tend to aggregate, to form a herd or flock and in so doing immediately are distinguished from (more or less strongly) those who identify themselves with other groups.

National, international, local and social history is largely the record of the consequences of groupism, a biologically necessary (no doubt) product of the evolution of the species. If groups are formed, group interests are bound to diverge and can result in Crusades, concentration camps, football hooliganism, Waco, city riots - or even sociology v evolutionary psychology. Groupism is a central aspect of human evolutionary psychology. Nations, societies, or states are ingroups on the largest scale, formed of multiple subsidiary ingroups and regarding other nations, societies or states as outgroups. Consideration of smaller groups can throw light on the cohesion of the largest groups. The obverse of the unity of the group is the potential for intergroup conflict. Social identity plays an important role in ingroup-outgroup relations, the distribution of resources, self-categorization, and expectations for behavior. It is an automatic redefinition of "self" in terms of shared group membership.

Ethnic groups (that is groups with real or apparent genetic similarity) are a central source of values and identity, significantly more so than class, so much so that the modern state has been unable to absorb them. What the modern state has done, however, is to carry through a far-reaching integration of ethnic groups, so that those living in the same state share a range of features, attitudes, values when it comes to politics. Such groups are the central mechanism for providing individuals with their identity; "rather than thinking about individuals 'sacrificing' part of their identity when the become part of a group, [we should regard] individual identity as possible only in the context of secure group attachments...The notion of individuals apart from groups...is a product of western thought, not the human experience" (Ross, 1993: 76).

A unified evolutionary psychology (of the individual, the group and the nation) would recognise that all international politics (as well as national politics) depends finally on the characteristics of the psychology of the individual human. Konrad Lorenz had much of interest to say about the relation between individual psychology and membership of a group as a facilitation for cruder aspects of behaviour: "well- bred people behave atrociously towards strangers in the territorial defence of their compartment"; one could extend this to behaviour of well-bred people in bus queues, supermarket check-outs, carparks and road use (road rage), neighbour's quarrels. Behaviour of this kind which occurs under stress at the individual level is readily paralleled in contact between groups and nations.

Nations, being large human groups, have very similar characteristics to the smaller groups examined by social psychologists. Anderson (1983) suggests that unlike smaller groups, they are "Imagined Communities" because the members of even the smallest nation do not know most of their fellow-members, they will never meet them, they will never even hear of them, and yet, in the mind of each member of a nation lives the idea or ideal of national togetherness. However this applies to many groups (political parties, football fan clubs) besides nations. One can ask where in fact is the group, the nation or the state. The group, the nation and the state have their existence only in the minds of the individuals forming the group, the nation or the state. The existence of the group, the state or nation is a kind of shared virtual reality or one might compare the individual's awareness of them with the individual's awareness of his own body, the body-image, and think of the body-image of the state, the nation, the society, the group generally. The individual's body-image and the largest grouping to which an individual belongs, are in fact a mapping of the experienced environment of the individual, existing only in the individual mind. One can indeed in the light of this repeat that to understand the functioning of the group, the state and the nation, one should start from evolved individual psychology.

Nation state and language

It has been said that territory, language, culture, religion, history or race are possible but not necessary factors in the creation of a national identity; what is close to universal in human social organisation, is the tendency to develop collective identities; a process basically the same whether the organisation is the clan, the tribe, the family or the nation, a primal need for tribal affiliation and warfare. The biological utility arose from the need for the social unit to have the loyalty or cohesiveness necessary to protect the group from external threats - both from animals and other humans or to conquer the tribe in the next valley; "We are a pack animal. And the pack has been the family, the extended family, the tribe, and then the nation state". The nation state offers most of its members a stronger sense of security, belonging or affiliation, and even personal identity, than does any alternative large group.

Nations and societies have disappeared and have emerged. See the kaleidoscopic changes of European nations in the 19th century and of extra-European nations in the 20th century. Societies change their collective genomes over time, they may spawn new societies e.g. the break-up of empires or the USSR. The analogy may be more with amoebas, funguses, invertebrate multiplication. There have been rough games in the playground of history with the principle of nationality reflected into sport. Less than ten per cent of all states in the United Nations consist mainly of one ethnic group. People are still prepared to die for their country. The disappearance of communism alone created 20 new states to add to the existing 165 members of the United Nations.

What has been said so far is not far removed from ideas formulated by Herder in the 18th century. Herder defined the nation as "a group of people having a common origin and common institutions, including language"; the nation-state represents the union of the individual with the national community; each people is unique; polyglot entities were "absurd monsters contrary to nature". In 1772, his book "On the Origin of Language" presented the idea that a language expresses the collective experiences of the group of its speakers. Herder has been criticised by some authors as the source of the aggressive nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It has also been argued that 'nation' and 'nationalism' (meaning national identity, not aggressive nationalism) are recent and artificial constructs. These views have been effectively criticised for being simplistic and historically inaccurate. Herder was far from being nationalist in any pejorative sense. More generally there are convincing examples which refute the assumption that nationalism only became important in the nineteenth century as a result of modernisation. As Anthony Smith has pointed out, this ignores thousands of years of separatist nationalism; it makes incomprehensible the intractability of contemporary nationalism and the obvious similarities between modern nationalism and the striving of ethnic groups for their land and independence from time immemorial. The idea that anything properly called nationalism is recent leaves one to wonder what the Irish were excited about for the past eight hundred years, or what we should call the loyalties of Venetians and Bavarians before Italy and Germany existed; someone who, 300 years ago, was a Prussian first and a German second, was no less a nationalist then a contemporary German; someone who, 2500 years ago, was an Athenian first and a Greek second, was no less a nationalist than someone today who is a Greek first, a European second, and an Athenian third.

The significance of the nation, of national identity, can more properly be considered in evolutionary terms or in the light of recent history. E.O.Wilson sees nationalism as a natural extension of tribalism, which, in turn, is a product of kin selection; nation connotes a group of people who believe they are ancestrally related and connotes identification with and loyalty to one's nation as just defined. It endows the members of a national population with an identity which is thought to be unique and distinct from other population groups, thought to be a relatively homogeneous entity. Nationalism holds the nation and the state together. The resurgence of nationalism over the last few years is hardly surprising: 'national identity' makes it possible to locate oneself in the world. A "native nation" is a people of common heritage, language, geography, culture, political system, and desire for common association; there are relatively few nation-states, less than two hundred, but many "native nations", more than three thousand. The scope for ethnic friction is obvious; only ten per cent of states in the United Nations consist mainly of one ethnic group; in Europe the desire for a national identity has re-asserted itself as a key features of collective human nature; long suppressed European nations have suddenly reappeared, a movement directly opposed to the supranational ambitions of European Union. The new emphasis on the nation is in part a reaction against pressures towards homogenisation, the reduction of national differences, and particularly globalisation.

Globalisation

Globalisation in practice means that the boundaries between countries, nationalities or cultures are being eroded, that culture is becoming separated from distinct geographical areas, and that the contours of a global culture are emerging where most of the world population will share important cultural aspects and attitudes. Whilst animal groups persist with little change over time, for humans powerful forces are working against the cohesion of social groups and nations. All transfrontier forms of trade, communication, entertainment and travel operate to replace distinctive social group or national patterns of behaviour and culture by new transnational or world models. Globalisation means the growing integration of international markets for goods, services and finance but it goes far beyond purely economic, industrial or financial trends. The proponents of globalisation tend to believe that the effective sovereignty of the nation state is now significantly constrained, and pressures for harmonization or at least convergence in the social programs is narrowing the room for manoeuvre enjoyed by governments. An extremely important consequence of the globalisation of communication, of travel facilities, is vastly increased migration flows as populations in the poorer world can see the contrast between their lives and those of the countries to which they are now able to travel.

Language and nation

How in the face of these great and ever-increasing global pressures have nations, nation-states survived and, recently, become even more self-assertive? What makes it possible for smaller nations to maintain and reinforce their identities - or indeed for new national identities to come into existence? One of the answers to explain the persistence and even recrudescence of the national idea is language, the diversity of languages going with an existing or increasing diversity of nations. Language, which far back in early antiquity began to be coupled with a sense of collective identity, has been mobilized as a major vehicle for a successful implementation of national identity among often rather heterogeneous sorts of populations. The construction of the self, which for human beings derives from and is constructed through language, means that human individuals can be conscious not only of their own selves but also of the selves of others; the shared communication through language of members of the group makes possible the moulding of each individual's behaviour and attitudes and the transmission of structures of ideas about the society of which they form part. There are many factors which can go to constitute a nation, territory, language, culture, religion, history or race, but language and shared descent are by far the most important. To understand how important language has been is and no doubt will be in the future in the construction of national identities one can look at the relation between languages, nations and states in the past and in the present when many new states are seeking to create a sense of nationhood; states resulting from the collapse of multi-ethnic, multi-language empires (including the Soviet Union) are facing the problem of finding a new basis for their unity and cohesion. The following short notes relate to some of the more interesting situations:

Austria: Under the Habsburgs Austrians had no problem of identity. They were Germans or Magyars or Czechs, or Slovenes, etc. who were also Austrians. After the end of the empire, successor states were language-based: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Austria itself where the German language remains one of the main determinants of national consciousness.

Basque: The first and most basic element in Basque identity is Euskera, the language; the name of the Basque nation, Euskal Herria, means "nation of Euskera"; Basques are those who speak Basque.

Belgium: The sharp separation between Dutch and French speakers means that, as Pierre van der Berghe has put it, Belgium is no closer to being a nation than it was when it was created in 1830; the Flemings and Walloons are still almost exactly where Julius Caesar left them after De Bello Gallico!

Canada: Canada faces a severe problem in defining its national identity, increasingly divided between English-speakers and French-speakers. Quebec nationalism, based on the French language,is in conflict with the concept that the nation-state should be based on the existence of a community all speaking and using a common language.

Catalonia: The sense of Catalan identity is linked closely to possession of the Catalan language and has been recognised by the autonomous status conceded to Catalonia by Spain. Modern Catalan nationalism emerged in the 19th century through a literary revival of the language among intellectual and middle class groups.

China: Chinese national identity is based not on language but on common descent; it transcends the extreme diversity of religious practices, family structures, spoken languages and regional cultures of population groups that all define themselves as Chinese. "Chineseness" (also in Taiwan and Singapore) is primarily defined as a matter of blood and descent. As the Chinese see it, one does not become Chinese in the same way as one becomes Swiss or Dutch; "This yellow river bred a nation identified by its yellow skin pigment, its earliest ancestor the Yellow Emperor".

Eastern Europe: There is a strong correlation between religion, ethnicity, language and nationality. There are unsettled problems: in Bulgaria, the question of the Turkish minority could return; there are difficulties relating to language-based minorities in Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Serbia; in Slovakia the Slovak majority has been imposing increasingly stringent language restrictions on the ethnic Hungarian minority.

France: France is the paradigmatic example of a nation-state based on unity of language and historic territory but not on shared descent. The national origins of the French population are very various but through language a prestigious culture and historical tradition is transmitted to French-speaking citizens. Given the importance of language as the main force creating cohesion and unity it is not surprising that the state is engaged more actively perhaps than in any other country in preserving the purity of the language and promoting its use both in former colonies and more widely.

Germany: The German language through which the awareness of a common history and a common ancestry was transmitted was the principal unifying force from the time of Napoleon's 1806 invasion of Germany and later throughout the 19th century as a united Germany was created.

Gaeilge: The Celtic peoples of Europe defined by language constitute six separate nations. These are Alba (Scotland), Breizh (Brittany), Cymru (Wales), Eire (Ireland), Kernow (Cornwall) and Mannin (Isle of Man). These six have a total combined population of about 17 million. Of these, a little over 2.5 million can speak a Celtic language, with approximately another 1.25 million speakers living outside the home nations.

India: The new India after the British was faced with a massive problem in creating a sense of national identity, creating a nation, in the face of the myriad languages, ethnic groups, religions, cultural patterns within its borders. Recent political debate in India has been largely concerned with this issue. The Hindu party, the BJP, is committed to the concept of "One Nation, One People and One Culture" to be founded, they say, on the cultural heritage which is central to all regions, religions and languages, a civilizational identity constituting the cultural nationalism of India.

Iran: The focus is on the Persian language and its role in forming and sustaining the Iranian national identity. "Only with respect to two things were we Iranians separate from other Muslims: history and language, the two factors on which we proceeded to build our own identity as a people or nation. Language was the foundation, floor, and refuge for the soul, a stronghold within which we stood".

Ireland: The territory of Ireland contains populations of different descent, Scottish and Irish, speaking a common language, English, for centuries but divided by religion, history and culture. As a support and symbol for a separate Irish national identity, the Irish language was revived and used for state purposes but English remains the language in common use. Ireland is a prime example to demonstrate that use of a common language by itself is not sufficient to create a national identity.

Israel: The revival and prescribed introduction of Hebrew in Israel is a counter-example to that of Ireland. Despite the very varied origins of the Israeli population, with many different mother tongues, Hebrew has become the common and generally used language. It shows that by adopting a certain language, a certain population, a certain society, can declare what identity it wants to show to itself as well as to the rest of the world.

Italy: Italy like Germany came together as a nation-state in the 19th century largely on the basis of the Italian language and the culture and history transmitted through the language. Currently there are concerns there about how cultural identity is constructed and manipulated, an issue said to be made more urgent by the influx of African, Indochinese, and Eastern European immigrants into Italy today.

Japan: Japan is the chief instance of a country which is racially homogeneous with small ethnic minorities, strong shared culture, a national religion and national myths, historical isolation and identity within a defined and well-separated territory. The Japanese language is an extremely powerful and cherished force in creating the national identity both in itself and as the instrument by which Japanese consciousness has been formed and through which awareness of Japanese culture and history has been transmitted.

Nigeria: A post-colonial country which faces many problems in creating any sense of national identity or unity of nation and state. There are very many languages, many important tribes, a diverse set of religions with major territorial differences in culture. It has a relatively short history as a separate state.

North Korea: North Korea in a number of ways resembles Japan in the strong basis for its sense of national identity. The nation is based on common descent, a common language, a long cultural tradition, and under its present rulers a single ideology. Like hiragana and katakana in Japan, it is perhaps not irrelevant that in addition to the unifying force of the Korean language, there is the distinct Korean writing system.

Norway: The sense of national identity in Norway developed in the specific historical circumstances, links with Denmark, its union with Sweden. The language was originally Danish. When Norway separated itself from Sweden in 1905, a new language developed from a synthesis of a variety of Norwegian dialects and relics of the old authentic Norwegian language. Toward the end of the 1930s, a third language was created by a government committee, Samnorsk. Others have commented that no Norwegian can know today precisely what language should be used or how words should be spelled and there is continuing language conflict: "Ask Norwegians how many languages they know, and they will reply, Twelve: Swedish, Danish, and ten Norwegian!".

Philippines: The Philippines is another relatively recent post-colonial state where there is concern about national identity given the differences in language, tribes, religion and culture. "Who is the Filipino? Where did he come from and where is he going? We are a people who, in these postcolonial times, have yet to define a national identity. There are those who would view this as a tragedy. It can, however, more sensibly be viewed as a challenge." (a Government Minister).

South Africa: With four major and twenty three minor languages and great ethnic and cultural diversity South Africa is grappling with the severe problems involved in creating a sense of nationhood, a national identity.

Switzerland: Switzerland is linguistically divided with French, Italian and German and some other languages; territorially it is divided into cantons with historical, cultural, economic and religious differences yet it is one the stablest nation-states in Europe preserving its neutrality and its independence of the powerful nations surrounding it. One may reasonably ask what can be the source of its national identity and how has it managed to survive? Is it really to be classed as a nation-state? Swiss do not and cannot define their national culture by language though Swiss-German, which is incomprehensible outside Switzerland, is something by which the German-Swiss are satisfied to distinguish themselves from 'other' Germans. Swiss consciousness must be derived from something else. The solution adopted in Switzerland effectively creates a superordinate Swiss identity for certain purposes, while fully recognising the right of the different language groups to develop on a separate basis. Swiss identity is the result of a voluntary but fragile construction which is seen to be vulnerable to movements towards closer European union.

Soviet Union: The ending of the Soviet Union has left considerable problems for the successor states but these problems also existed when the USSR was formed. Lenin was much concerned with the "nationalities question"; at first the Soviets promoted the rights of minority ethnic groups and the idea of national rights, which conflated culture, language, and territory, was one of Lenin's most uncompromising positions; support for nationalism and ethnic rights became a sacred principle of Marxist-Leninism. Stalin defined a nation in terms of a unique history, with a stable language, economy, and psychology within a bounded territory.

Russia: Russia is in search of a "national idea" that can define its essence and inspire its citizens in the struggle for a post-Soviet identity. Religion and ethnicity are not a sufficient foundation because Russia has 20 ethnic republics dominated by Tartars, Muslims and others. The process of state building in post-Soviet Russia takes the form of an attempt to create new "national identities" in Russia's regions, involving education and language policy, cultural policy and the politics of symbols.

Ukraine: In the Ukraine there is a search for the proper formula for the development of a distinctive national identity to unify the various ethnic groups and regions. In 1989, 59.5 percent of Ukrainians in Ukraine were fluent in Russian and approximately 12.3 percent considered Russian their native language; only 1.6 percent of Russians in Ukraine considered Ukrainian their native language, and only 32.8 percent were fluent in Ukrainian. Part of the difficulty in formulating a new language policy was that the Soviets had created an image of the "inferior" nature of the Ukrainian language. The current language law proclaims Ukrainian to be the only state language but in practice there are difficulties:"The state is Ukraine, so the language should be Ukrainian, that was the natural requirement or demand. But the majority in parliament is from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine" and many ethnic Ukrainians commonly use Russian rather than Ukrainian.

Belarus: The constitution made Belarusian the official language though with the right to use Russian for inter-ethnic communication. 78 per cent of population are ethnic Belarusian and only 13 per cent Russian, but in 1995 a large majority agreed that Russian should become an official language. Nation-building is more acute in Belarus than in any of the ex-Soviet republics; Belarusians are aware that they are neither Russian nor Polish, but lack a plausible myth of national descent around which to build a more positive sense of national identity.

Bashkirs: Bashkortostan is one of the most multi-cultural of all Russia's republics; in a population of almost 4 million people there are more than 100 nationalities; 22 per cent are Bashkirs, 28 per cent Tatars and over 39 per cent Russians. Bashkirs press for Bashkir and Russian as the official state languages arguing that only the Bashkirs are truly indigenous; Tatars press for Tatar and Bashkir as official languages along with Russian, arguing that there are more Tatars in the republic than Bashkirs.

Central Asia: Russian is generally the language of administration and 'modern' activities and also a lingua franca of communication between local ethnicities. Resident Russians perceive the post-Soviet elevation of local vernaculars to 'state languages' as a threat. An example of ethnic and linguistic diversity is Kazakhstan where the population is - or was since there has been a good deal of migration - 38% Russians, 37% Kazakhs, and 25% Germans, Ukrainians, Koreans, Chinese, and others.

Georgia: Georgia is a multi-ethnic country. Georgians comprise 70 per cent of the population and, apart from the large Russian presence, there are significant ethnic groups which do not identify themselves as Georgian, the Ossetian and Abkhaz minorities. Many Russians in Georgia do not speak Georgian,

Moldavia: In what was formerly Romanian Bessarabia, there are difficulties in establishing a national identity based on language. Ethnic Romanians face the problem that they have not properly learned their mother tongue, or have forgotten it.

United States: Historically, given the dominance of English, language has not been a major theme in American political life. Recently concern about the growth in the use of other languages, notably Spanish, has led to 20 states or more prescribing English as their official language. Traditionally American national feeling has not been ethnic but based on a sense of shared belonging and social identity which has meant that at least in theory anybody could become an American citizen but this required a commitment to English as the common language.

Languages and genes

Cavalli-Sforza's massive History and Geography of Human Genes constitutes the first genetic atlas of the world with 500 maps showing areas of genetic similarity together with profiles of hundreds of thousands of individuals from almost 2,000 communities and tribes. The data show that genetic markers and language families go together. There is a remarkable parallel between the history of genes and that of languages with coincidence of genetic and linguistic branching points. This work on patterns of genetic and linguistic distribution has led to interesting findings about the diversity and relations of languages of which the following are a few examples:

Khoisan: This language may be the result of a very ancient mix of west Asians and black Africans.

Basque: Basques have a different language and also different genes from the rest of the peoples of Western Europe.

English: In a worldwide sample of 42 populations, the population closest to the English is the Danish (21), and the one most distant the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire (2373); genetic distance between the English and the Japanese is assessed at 1244, at 22 with the Germans, 24 with the French , 51 with the Italians, and 204 with the Greeks. The higher the number the greater the genetic distance; the genetic distances seem to relate well to linguistic distances between the various populations.

Italian: Magna Graecia genetically is found to be distinct from the rest of Italy; Southern Italian populations are genetically similar to those of modern Greece; there is also difference between east and west Sicily which can be ascribed to Greek colonization in the east, and Phoenician colonization in the west. The genetic assessments apparently discriminate Etruria from the rest of Italy and in east Italy, roughly correspond to the area of proto-historic East Italic inscriptions .

Other research besides that of Cavalli-Sforza suggests similar conclusions on the relation between genes and languages. Sokal says there is a definite association between gene frequencies and the modern language families of Europe; the correlation between genetics and language is significant. (Sokal 1989, 1992) . In Australia research by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies concluded that physical differences exist between aborigine populations and for large parts of the Australian continent genetic and linguistic differentiation has been proceeding in a similar manner.

Language as a special factor in nation formation and national identity

The very obvious parallelism between the analysis and findings of population genetics and the phenomena of language differentiation, language variation, dialectal features, language spread, etc. has long been treated as metaphorical but the recent research work suggests that there is more to it than that. The whole account in population genetics of the processes of race and species formation bears a close resemblance to the accounts given by linguists of the processes by which linguistic variation within a community can develop into differentiation of dialects and later of separate languages, by very similar processes of geographic separation, migration, isolation - with reproductive isolation in the case of the development of races and species being paralleled by communicative isolation in the case of dialects and languages. Development of a language is the result of interaction between the genetically controlled cerebral, anatomical and physiological features of the population (reflecting the relative gene frequencies within the population) and the environment within which the development of the language takes place. Language is a group product biassed towards the aspects of language most compatible with the cerebral and bodily articulatory organisation prevailing in the group within which the language is to be used. So far as basic and original lexicon is derived from integration of articulation with perceptual and motor organisation, the words found in the group will have their structure determined (within the limits set by the phonology preferentially adopted) by neural organisation governing perception and the planning of motor action. If gene frequencies alter significantly in a population over a period, then the tendencies and preferences of the children developing in that period will also alter. This will, insofar as the genes concerned are those affecting relevant physical or cerebral organisation for language, constitute a force tending towards language change. Even though children as such have no important influence on speech patterns and preferences, the tendencies and preferences changed in them as a result of changes in gene frequencies will continue to exist when they grow up into adults and it will be at the adult stage that the force deriving from population change in gene frequencies will start to have an impact on the phonological, lexical or syntactic features of the languages. The broad line of argument derives from the motor theory as such, that is from the theory that there is a specific neural basis for language derived from pre-existing cerebral organisation.

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