Hi Folks
A summary of an article recently appearing in Nature at
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?
file=/nature/journal/v426/n6965/abs/nature02029_fs.html&dynoptions=do
i1076302140. Does anyone have access to the full article?
Regards
John
Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-
European origin
RUSSELL D. GRAY AND QUENTIN D. ATKINSON
Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019,
Auckland 1020, New Zealand
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
R.G. (
rd.gray@...).
Languages, like genes, provide vital clues about human history. The
origin of the Indo-European language family is "the most intensively
studied, yet still most recalcitrant, problem of historical
linguistics". Numerous genetic studies of Indo-European origins have
also produced inconclusive results. Here we analyse linguistic data
using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology. We
test two theories of Indo-European origin: the 'Kurgan expansion'
and the 'Anatolian farming' hypotheses. The Kurgan theory centres on
possible archaeological evidence for an expansion into Europe and
the Near East by Kurgan horsemen beginning in the sixth millennium
BP. In contrast, the Anatolian theory claims that Indo-European
languages expanded with the spread of agriculture from Anatolia
around 8,0009,500 years BP. In striking agreement with the
Anatolian hypothesis, our analysis of a matrix of 87 languages with
2,449 lexical items produced an estimated age range for the initial
Indo-European divergence of between 7,800 and 9,800 years BP. These
results were robust to changes in coding procedures, calibration
points, rooting of the trees and priors in the bayesian analysis.