IN: The Huastec or Teenek (contraction of Te' Inik, "people from here"; also known as Huaxtec, Wastek or Huastecos), are an indigenous people of Mexico, living in the La Huasteca region including the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Panuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There are approximately 66,000 Huastec speakers today, of which two-thirds are in San Luis Potosi and one-third in Veracruz, although their population was probably much higher, as much as half a million, when the Spanish arrived in 1529. The ancient Huastec civilization is one of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. Judging from archaeological remains, they are thought to date back to approximately the 10th century BCE, although their most productive period of civilization is usually considered to be the Postclassic era between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Empire.

Studies of language change, especially glottochronology (that is, words changing in form or being replaced by borrowed synonyms), have given linguists the tools to estimate the point in time when many pairs of languages diverged from their common ancestral tongue. The procedure depends on the assumption that languages change, in the absence of widespread literacy, at a constant rate. Of all the languages descended from Proto-Mayan, the proto-Huastecan language was the first to split from Mayan proper. The second split, in the non-Huastecan main branch, was between proto-Yucatecan, now spoken across the Yucatan Peninsula, and the ancestors of all other Maya languages. The only other language, besides Huastec, which arose from proto-Huastecan was Chicomuceltec (also called Cotoque), a language once spoken in Chiapas near Comitan, but now extinct. Linguists have approximated that the precursor to the language of the Huastecs diverged from the Proto-Mayan language between 2200 and 1200 BCE. Linguist Morris Swadesh posited the later date as the latest possible time for this split to have occurred, and gave the Huastec/Chicomuceltec inik ("man") versus other-Maya winik as a typical contrast. McQuown suggests 1500 BCE, Manrique Castaneda 1800 BCE, and Dahlin 2100 BCE as the most likely dates for the split. Kaufman's proposed date of about 2200 BCE would require two regular phonological (sound) changes that are attested in all Maya languages, "r" changing to "y" and "q" to "k", to have happened independently after the split, in both the Huastec/Chicomuceltec branch and in the branch of all other Mayan languages. Robertson's work on verb affixes in the Mayan languages implies that the Huastecs were in contact with the proto-Tzeltal branch of Mayan. In Proto-Mayan, absolutives could be marked either by a prefix or a suffix, depending on the presence of a tense/aspect marker. This feature was retained in Q'anjob'al (a Maya language, spoken in the Cuchumatanes mountains of Guatemala), but lost in other branches. (Yucatecan always uses a suffix for absolutives, while K'iche' always uses a prefix.) Huastec appears to have been influenced by proto-Tzeltal, resulting in such innovations as the preposition ta, used with the object of a verb in the third person. If, as seems likely, the Huastec-Maya split occurred around 2000 BCE, the Huastecs probably did not travel far from the Guatemala-Chiapas borderlands until after 1100 BCE, more or less, by which time the proto-Tzeltalans had been established as a separate branch.

were there many casualties?

OUT: have

IN: Ann Margaret Veneman (born June 29, 1949) was the Executive Director of UNICEF from 2005 to 2010. Her appointment was announced on January 18, 2005 by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Previously, Veneman was the United States Secretary of Agriculture, the first, and as of 2018 the only, woman to hold that position. Veneman served as USDA Secretary from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005, leaving to become the fifth executive director of UNICEF.

Veneman began her legal career as a staff attorney with the General Counsel's office of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District in Oakland, California, in 1976. In 1978, she returned to Modesto, where she served as a Deputy Public Defender. In 1980, she joined the Modesto law firm of Damrell, Damrell and Nelson, where she was an associate and later a partner. Veneman joined the United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service in 1986, serving as Associate Administrator until 1989. During this time she worked on the Uruguay Round talks for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). She subsequently served as Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity Programs from 1989 to 1991. From 1991 to 1993, she served as United States Department of Agriculture's Deputy Secretary, the first woman appointed as the Department's second-highest-ranking official. At this point Veneman took a break from political and administrative office to practice with the law firm and lobby group Patton, Boggs & Blow and also served on several boards of directors and advisory groups. In 1995 Veneman re-entered government, when she was appointed Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, again being the first woman to hold the position. From 1999 to 2001 Veneman was an attorney with Nossaman LLP, where she focused her attention on food, agriculture, environment, technology, and trade related issues. On 20 January 2001 she was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in as Secretary of Agriculture, a position she held until January 20, 2005.

Did she advance her career in politics in 2001

OUT:
On 20 January 2001 she was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in as Secretary of Agriculture, a position she held until January 20, 2005.