AJHG Volume 99, Issue 1, p163–173, 7 July 2016
Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup N: A Non-trivial Time-Resolved Phylogeography that Cuts across Language Families
Anne-Mai Ilumäe et al.
The paternal haplogroup (hg) N is distributed from southeast Asia to eastern Europe. The demographic processes that have shaped the vast extent of this major Y chromosome lineage across numerous linguistically and autosomally divergent populations have previously been unresolved. On the basis of 94 high-coverage re-sequenced Y chromosomes, we establish and date a detailed hg N phylogeny. We evaluate geographic structure by using 16 distinguishing binary markers in 1,631 hg N Y chromosomes from a collection of 6,521 samples from 56 populations. The more southerly distributed sub-clade N4 emerged before N2a1 and N3, found mostly in the north, but the latter two display more elaborate branching patterns, indicative of regional contrasts in recent expansions. In particular, a number of prominent and well-defined clades with common N3a3’6 ancestry occur in regionally dissimilar northern Eurasian populations, indicating almost simultaneous regional diversification and expansion within the last 5,000 years. This patrilineal genetic affinity is decoupled from the associated higher degree of language diversity.
Link
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
July 11, 2016
April 19, 2015
mtDNA of Alaskan Eskimos
AJPA DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22750
Mitochondrial diversity of Iñupiat people from the Alaskan North Slope provides evidence for the origins of the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo peoples
Jennifer A. Raff et al.
ABSTRACT
Objectives:
All modern Iñupiaq speakers share a common origin, the result of a recent (∼800 YBP) and rapid trans-Arctic migration by the Neo-Eskimo Thule, who replaced the previous Paleo-Eskimo inhabitants of the region. Reduced mitochondrial haplogroup diversity in the eastern Arctic supports the archaeological hypothesis that the migration occurred in an eastward direction. We tested the hypothesis that the Alaskan North Slope served as the origin of the Neo- and Paleo-Eskimo populations further east.
Materials and Methods:
We sequenced HVR I and HVR II of the mitochondrial D-loop from 151 individuals in eight Alaska North Slope communities, and compared genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships between the North Slope Inupiat and other Arctic populations from Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Canada, and Greenland.
Results:
Mitochondrial lineages from the North Slope villages had a low frequency (2%) of non-Arctic maternal admixture, and all haplogroups (A2, A2a, A2b, D2a, and D4b1a–formerly known as D3) found in previously sequenced Neo- and Paleo-Eskimos and living Inuit and Eskimo peoples from across the North American Arctic. Lineages basal for each haplogroup were present in the North Slope. We also found the first occurrence of two haplogroups in contemporary North American Arctic populations: D2a, previously identified only in Aleuts and Paleo-Eskimos, and the pan-American C4.
Discussion:
Our results yield insight into the maternal population history of the Alaskan North Slope and support the hypothesis that this region served as an ancestral pool for eastward movements to Canada and Greenland, for both the Paleo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo populations
Link
Mitochondrial diversity of Iñupiat people from the Alaskan North Slope provides evidence for the origins of the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo peoples
Jennifer A. Raff et al.
ABSTRACT
Objectives:
All modern Iñupiaq speakers share a common origin, the result of a recent (∼800 YBP) and rapid trans-Arctic migration by the Neo-Eskimo Thule, who replaced the previous Paleo-Eskimo inhabitants of the region. Reduced mitochondrial haplogroup diversity in the eastern Arctic supports the archaeological hypothesis that the migration occurred in an eastward direction. We tested the hypothesis that the Alaskan North Slope served as the origin of the Neo- and Paleo-Eskimo populations further east.
Materials and Methods:
We sequenced HVR I and HVR II of the mitochondrial D-loop from 151 individuals in eight Alaska North Slope communities, and compared genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships between the North Slope Inupiat and other Arctic populations from Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Canada, and Greenland.
Results:
Mitochondrial lineages from the North Slope villages had a low frequency (2%) of non-Arctic maternal admixture, and all haplogroups (A2, A2a, A2b, D2a, and D4b1a–formerly known as D3) found in previously sequenced Neo- and Paleo-Eskimos and living Inuit and Eskimo peoples from across the North American Arctic. Lineages basal for each haplogroup were present in the North Slope. We also found the first occurrence of two haplogroups in contemporary North American Arctic populations: D2a, previously identified only in Aleuts and Paleo-Eskimos, and the pan-American C4.
Discussion:
Our results yield insight into the maternal population history of the Alaskan North Slope and support the hypothesis that this region served as an ancestral pool for eastward movements to Canada and Greenland, for both the Paleo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo populations
Link
February 19, 2015
Late (not necessarily steppe) split of Proto-Indo-European
This is the paper that I saw referenced in a previous study. As I suspected, the paper does not in fact provide support specifically for the steppe hypothesis, but only for a late split of Proto-Indo-European (that is consistent with the steppe hypothesis but not unique to it).
I don't know how well linguists have figured out how to estimate time depth; the fact that a small tweak in the methodology (compared to Bouckaert et al.) results in a 3,000 year drop in the estimated age of the PIE split does not add to my confidence about the robustness of this field. Regardless of which hypothesis one accepts, the PIE split occurred thousands of years before the first written monuments in any Indo-European language. For the time being, the ball is on the other side of the court, which may accept this finding or come up with another tweak in the methodology that gives yet another date.
In any case, accepting provisionally that the Chang et al. date is accurate then it falsifies the Anatolian farmer/IE language hypothesis. So, steppe aficionados can declare a partial victory, because there is one less opponent to worry about. Falsification of the Anatolian first farmer hypothesis is not a complete victory, as the PIE urheimat question is not a boxing match between Kurganists and Anatolianists, but rather a mêlée with many players holding on to their swords. So, if you're willing to believe that the methodology is mature enough and they finally "got it right", you need only find a PIE split around 6,000 years ago, but you need not find it on the steppe.
ANCESTRY-CONSTRAINED PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS SUPPORTS THE INDO-EUROPEAN STEPPE HYPOTHESIS
Will Chang et al.
Discussion of Indo-European origins and dispersal focuses on two hypotheses. Qualitative evidence from reconstructed vocabulary and correlations with archaeological data suggest that IndoEuropean languages originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and spread together with cultural innovations associated with pastoralism, beginning c. 6500–5500 bp. An alternative hypothesis, according to which Indo-European languages spread with the diffusion of farming from Anatolia, beginning c. 9500–8000 bp, is supported by statistical phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses of lexical traits. The time and place of the Indo-European ancestor language therefore remain disputed. Here we present a phylogenetic analysis in which ancestry constraints permit more accurate inference of rates of change, based on observed changes between ancient or medieval languages and their modern descendants, and we show that the result strongly supports the steppe hypothesis. Positing ancestry constraints also reveals that homoplasy is common in lexical traits, contrary to the assumptions of previous work. We show that lexical traits undergo recurrent evolution due to recurring patterns of semantic and morphological change.
February 16, 2015
Turkic language family time depth: 204BC
The regular-sound-change tree estimates a mean divergence time between the outgroup Chuvash and other Turkic languages of 204 BCE, with a 95% credible interval of 605 BCE to 81 CE. This compares to proposals from glottochronological analyses that suggest dates of 30 BCE to 0 CE [21] and 500 BCE to 50 CE from historical data [18, 21 and 22]. The sporadic-sound-change model estimates the mean age of the tree to be more than two millennia older (2408 BCE, 95% CI = 3994–1279 BCE), because it wrongly assumes that the many occurrences of regular sound change along the outgroup Chuvash branch are multiple instances of independent phonological change.Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 1, 5 January 2015, Pages 1–9
Detecting Regular Sound Changes in Linguistics as Events of Concerted Evolution
Daniel J. Hruschka et al.
Summary
Background
Concerted evolution is normally used to describe parallel changes at different sites in a genome, but it is also observed in languages where a specific phoneme changes to the same other phoneme in many words in the lexicon—a phenomenon known as regular sound change. We develop a general statistical model that can detect concerted changes in aligned sequence data and apply it to study regular sound changes in the Turkic language family.
Results
Linguistic evolution, unlike the genetic substitutional process, is dominated by events of concerted evolutionary change. Our model identified more than 70 historical events of regular sound change that occurred throughout the evolution of the Turkic language family, while simultaneously inferring a dated phylogenetic tree. Including regular sound changes yielded an approximately 4-fold improvement in the characterization of linguistic change over a simpler model of sporadic change, improved phylogenetic inference, and returned more reliable and plausible dates for events on the phylogenies. The historical timings of the concerted changes closely follow a Poisson process model, and the sound transition networks derived from our model mirror linguistic expectations.
Conclusions
We demonstrate that a model with no prior knowledge of complex concerted or regular changes can nevertheless infer the historical timings and genealogical placements of events of concerted change from the signals left in contemporary data. Our model can be applied wherever discrete elements—such as genes, words, cultural trends, technologies, or morphological traits—can change in parallel within an organism or other evolving group.
Link
February 02, 2015
Strong (?) linguistic and archaeological evidence for steppe Indo-Europeans
In a new paper in Annual Review of Linguistics, David Anthony and Don Ringe make the archaeological and linguistic case for the steppe IE homeland hypothesis. It is very useful to see the evidence presented concisely in this way. Of course, I don't think that the evidence for the steppe IE hypothesis is "so strong" as it is said to be in the paper's abstract.
The authors first discuss the phylogeny of IE languages:
This doesn't seem to be evidence for the steppe hypothesis, but rather for the Anatolian one. The authors hypothesis a pre-4000BC Out-of-Steppe migration into the Balkans (migration 1 left), but that takes you only into the Balkans and not into all the places in Anatolia where IE languages were spoken historically (right). The hypothesis that pre-4000BC Proto-Anatolians migrated from the steppe must bridge quite a lot of ground to reach the historical Anatolians of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. It must also explain that the physical anthropological change in Anatolia in the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age is associated with migration of brachycephals which seems incompatible with movements from either the Copper Age Balkans or the Pontic-Caspian steppe that were occupied by gracile and robust dolicho-mesocephals respectively. Migration 1 is of course possible but it is hardly a better explanation for the first-order split of Anatolian vs. post-Anatolian Indo-European than expansions from the Neolithic "womb of nations" that included Anatolia. Arrows 1 and 2 do harmonize with the proposed linguistic phylogeny. But, why would steppe Indo-Europeans first migrate southwest, then east, and then west? What was the cause of this particular sequence of migrations (which is invoked to harmonize the the linguistic evidence)? I am perfectly willing to consider linguistic replacement in Anatolia (it happened at least twice in recorded history, first with Greek and then with Turkish), but the case is not particularly strong that it happened from a pre-4000BC Out-of-Steppe movement via the eastern Balkans. As for the Tocharians, their recorded language of the 1st millennium AD is 4ky removed from movement 2 to the Altai, so even if future discoveries convincingly prove this movement, the yawning gap of 4 thousand years will remain. My analysis of modern Uygurs shows that the Caucasoid element in the Turkic inhabitants of Eastern Turkestan (which presumably includes the Indo-European element) is complex, and perfectly compatible with a non-steppe, but rather West Asian ultimate origin of Tocharians.
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The authors next discuss the wheel vocabulary (left). The idea is that wheeled vehicles weren't known when farmers colonized Europe, so if PIE has terminology for wheeled vehicles, then it has to be later. I don't find these arguments convincing, because words change meanings, and PIE doesn't have a word for wheeled vehicle, but for a variety of its components, each of which might have meant something else originally.
But, even if one concedes wheeled vehicles, it's still the case that neither Anatolian nor Tocharian has a repertoire of many terms for wheeled vehicles. So, all the wheel vocabulary proves (if one accepts it at all) is that post-Anatolian or even post-Tocharian languages had wheeled vehicles. This then provides a chronological constraint to the spread of post-Anatolian (or post-Tocharian) IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles, but tells us absolutely nothing about where they spread from (and hence the steppe hypothesis) but only when they spread. Thus, the wheel vocabulary is consistent with a whole number of theories that propose a spread of IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles and provides no special support for the steppe hypothesis over others.
The authors next discuss the lexical borrowings into Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finno-Ugrian. But, this only shows that early Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers came into contact with early Indo-Europeans, not that Indo-Europeans originated near Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers. Moreover, the authors also mention that PIE shows evidence of contacts with Proto-Kartvelian speakers. By the same line of argument, the PIE homeland should be close to Georgia where Proto-Kartvelian languages were presumably spoken. Indeed, Uralic languages are very widely spoken from Europe to eastern Siberia and the Uralic geographical constraint is much weaker than the Kartvelian one, as there are many parts of Eurasia (including the Pontic-Caspian steppe) that Uralic languages may have been spoken of, but a very small part of Eurasia (the southern Caucasus and northeastern Anatolia) for which any evidence of Kartvelians exists. The authors suggest that a steppe PIE explains both Proto-Uralic and Proto-Kartvelian borrowings as the steppe is between presumable speakers of these two language families. True, but Northeast and Northwest Caucasian speakers lie between Proto-Kartvelians and the steppe. A PIE origin on the steppe must bypass the NW/NE Caucasian speakers to bring Indo-Europeans in contact with Kartvelians, and a PIE origin in highland West Asia must bypass the same to bring them into contact with Uralic speakers. In sum, I don't see at all how the evidence from lexical borrowings favors the steppe hypothesis strongly.
The authors next discuss the archaeological implications of placing the homeland on the steppe and discuss how it may have been carried out. I continue to think that the spread of metallurgy is the most obvious candidate for an enabling factor. Having the capacity to build and trade metal objects, or kill people with metal weapons gives one obvious advantages that are unquestionable in every circumstance in the way that flocks of cattle and sheep, horses, and wheeled vehicles are not. Not only Indo-Europeans but also Semitic speakers may have been enabled by metallurgy to spread their languages. Neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites may have been master metallurgists, but metallurgical progress enabled language spread just as other technological innovations (e.g., stirrups, firearms, ocean-worthy boats) did in more recent history.
The authors then criticize past work on phylogenetic modeling of languages and end their article with this sentence:
To conclude, I think that archaeology and linguistics have failed to make a convincing case for steppe Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is certainly a respectable and popular theory but the evidence for it is hardly "so strong" as to create serious problems for other hypotheses. Hopefully, archaeogenetics will succeed where archaeology and linguistics (despite their valiant efforts) have failed.
Annual Review of Linguistics Vol. 1: 199-219 (Volume publication date January 2015) DOI: 10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812
David W. Anthony1 and Don Ringe2
The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives
Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.
Link
The authors first discuss the phylogeny of IE languages:
It seems clear that the ancestor of the Anatolian subgroup (which includes Hittite) separated from the other dialects of PIE first, so from a cladistic point of view Anatolian is half the IE family (e.g., Jasanoff 2003). Within the non-Anatolian half, it appears that the ancestor of the Tocharian subgroup (whose attested languages were spoken in Xinjiang, today in western China, until approximately the tenth century ce) separated from the other dialects before the latter had diverged much (e.g., Winter 1998, Ringe 2000). It follows that an item inherited by two or more of the daughter subgroups can be reconstructed for “early” PIE only if it is attested in at least one Anatolian language and at least one non-Anatolian language, and such an item can be reconstructed for the ancestor of the non-Anatolian subgroups only if it is attested in one or both of the Tocharian languages and in some other IE language.
The authors next discuss the wheel vocabulary (left). The idea is that wheeled vehicles weren't known when farmers colonized Europe, so if PIE has terminology for wheeled vehicles, then it has to be later. I don't find these arguments convincing, because words change meanings, and PIE doesn't have a word for wheeled vehicle, but for a variety of its components, each of which might have meant something else originally.
But, even if one concedes wheeled vehicles, it's still the case that neither Anatolian nor Tocharian has a repertoire of many terms for wheeled vehicles. So, all the wheel vocabulary proves (if one accepts it at all) is that post-Anatolian or even post-Tocharian languages had wheeled vehicles. This then provides a chronological constraint to the spread of post-Anatolian (or post-Tocharian) IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles, but tells us absolutely nothing about where they spread from (and hence the steppe hypothesis) but only when they spread. Thus, the wheel vocabulary is consistent with a whole number of theories that propose a spread of IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles and provides no special support for the steppe hypothesis over others.The authors next discuss the lexical borrowings into Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finno-Ugrian. But, this only shows that early Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers came into contact with early Indo-Europeans, not that Indo-Europeans originated near Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers. Moreover, the authors also mention that PIE shows evidence of contacts with Proto-Kartvelian speakers. By the same line of argument, the PIE homeland should be close to Georgia where Proto-Kartvelian languages were presumably spoken. Indeed, Uralic languages are very widely spoken from Europe to eastern Siberia and the Uralic geographical constraint is much weaker than the Kartvelian one, as there are many parts of Eurasia (including the Pontic-Caspian steppe) that Uralic languages may have been spoken of, but a very small part of Eurasia (the southern Caucasus and northeastern Anatolia) for which any evidence of Kartvelians exists. The authors suggest that a steppe PIE explains both Proto-Uralic and Proto-Kartvelian borrowings as the steppe is between presumable speakers of these two language families. True, but Northeast and Northwest Caucasian speakers lie between Proto-Kartvelians and the steppe. A PIE origin on the steppe must bypass the NW/NE Caucasian speakers to bring Indo-Europeans in contact with Kartvelians, and a PIE origin in highland West Asia must bypass the same to bring them into contact with Uralic speakers. In sum, I don't see at all how the evidence from lexical borrowings favors the steppe hypothesis strongly.
The authors next discuss the archaeological implications of placing the homeland on the steppe and discuss how it may have been carried out. I continue to think that the spread of metallurgy is the most obvious candidate for an enabling factor. Having the capacity to build and trade metal objects, or kill people with metal weapons gives one obvious advantages that are unquestionable in every circumstance in the way that flocks of cattle and sheep, horses, and wheeled vehicles are not. Not only Indo-Europeans but also Semitic speakers may have been enabled by metallurgy to spread their languages. Neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites may have been master metallurgists, but metallurgical progress enabled language spread just as other technological innovations (e.g., stirrups, firearms, ocean-worthy boats) did in more recent history.
The authors then criticize past work on phylogenetic modeling of languages and end their article with this sentence:
Work currently in progress by the team of Chang, Hall, Cathcart, and Garrett promises to fill that gap.An article by these authors is listed in the journal Language website, albeit without the actual text of the article yet:
Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis
Will Chang, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall and Andrew Garrett, University of California, Berkeley
Discussion of Indo-European origins and dispersal focuses on two hypotheses. Qualitative evidence from reconstructed vocabulary and correlations with archaeological data suggest that Indo-European languages originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and spread together with cultural innovations associated with pastoralism, beginning c. 6500–5500 BP. An alternative hypothesis, according to which Indo-European languages spread with the diffusion of farming from Anatolia, beginning c. 9500–8000 BP, is supported by statistical phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses of lexical traits. The time and place of the Indo-European ancestor language therefore remain disputed. Here we present a phylogenetic analysis in which ancestry constraints permit more accurate inference of rates of change, based on observed changes between ancient or medieval languages and their modern descendants, and we show that the result strongly supports the steppe hypothesis. Positing ancestry constraints also reveals that homoplasy is common in lexical traits, contrary to the assumptions of previous work. We show that lexical traits undergo recurrent evolution due to recurring patterns of semantic and morphological change.It's not clear what the article itself shows. If this is simply a criticism of the "old" dates of the first PIE split proposed by Gray/Atkinson and Bouckaert et al., then this does not really support the steppe hypothesis uniquely, but rather argues against the Neolithic Anatolian one. However, there are many hypotheses other than these two (including my Bronze Age expansion of Indo-European languages hypothesis from West Asia which is somewhat related to that of Stanislav Grigoriev) that can accommodate a later split of PIE.
To conclude, I think that archaeology and linguistics have failed to make a convincing case for steppe Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is certainly a respectable and popular theory but the evidence for it is hardly "so strong" as to create serious problems for other hypotheses. Hopefully, archaeogenetics will succeed where archaeology and linguistics (despite their valiant efforts) have failed.
Annual Review of Linguistics Vol. 1: 199-219 (Volume publication date January 2015) DOI: 10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812
David W. Anthony1 and Don Ringe2
The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives
Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.
Link
November 25, 2014
Paternal lineages and languages in the Caucasus
- R1b: Indo-European
- R1a: Scytho-Sarmatian
- J2: Hurro-Urartian
- G2: Kartvelian
Human paternal lineages, languages, and environment in the caucasus.
Tarkhnishvili D1, Gavashelishvili A1, Murtskhvaladze M1, Gabelaia M1, Tevzadze G2.
Abstract
Publications that describe the composition of the human Y-DNA haplogroup in diffferent ethnic or linguistic groups and geographic regions provide no explicit explanation of the distribution of human paternal lineages in relation to specific ecological conditions. Our research attempts to address this topic for the Caucasus, a geographic region that encompasses a relatively small area but harbors high linguistic, ethnic, and Y-DNA haplogroup diversity. We genotyped 224 men that identified themselves as ethnic Georgian for 23 Y-chromosome short tandem-repeat markers and assigned them to their geographic places of origin. The genotyped data were supplemented with published data on haplogroup composition and location of other ethnic groups of the Caucasus. We used multivariate statistical methods to see if linguistics, climate, and landscape accounted for geographical diffferences in frequencies of the Y-DNA haplogroups G2, R1a, R1b, J1, and J2. The analysis showed significant associations of (1) G2 with wellforested mountains, (2) J2 with warm areas or poorly forested mountains, and (3) J1 with poorly forested mountains. R1b showed no association with environment. Haplogroups J1 and R1a were significantly associated with Daghestanian and Kipchak speakers, respectively, but the other haplogroups showed no such simple associations with languages. Climate and landscape in the context of competition over productive areas among diffferent paternal lineages, arriving in the Caucasus in diffferent times, have played an important role in shaping the present-day spatial distribution of patrilineages in the Caucasus. This spatial pattern had formed before linguistic subdivisions were finally shaped, probably in the Neolithic to Bronze Age. Later historical turmoil had little influence on the patrilineage composition and spatial distribution. Based on our results, the scenario of postglacial expansions of humans and their languages to the Caucasus from the Middle East, western Eurasia, and the East European Plain is plausible.
Link (pdf)
September 28, 2014
A limited genetic link between Mansi and Hungarians
Mol Genet Genomics. 2014 Sep 26. [Epub ahead of print]
Y-SNP L1034: limited genetic link between Mansi and Hungarian-speaking populations.
Fehér T1, Németh E, Vándor A, Kornienko IV, Csáji LK, Pamjav H.
Abstract
Genetic studies noted that the Hungarian Y-chromosomal gene pool significantly differs from other Uralic-speaking populations. Hungarians show very limited or no presence of haplogroup N-Tat, which is frequent among other Uralic-speaking populations. We proposed that some genetic links need to be observed between the linguistically related Hungarian and Mansi populations.This is the first attempt to divide haplogroup N-Tat into subhaplogroups by testing new downstream SNP markers L708 and L1034. Sixty Northern Mansi samples were collected in Western Siberia and genotyped for Y-chromosomal haplotypes and haplogroups. We found 14 Mansi and 92 N-Tat samples from 7 populations. Comparative results showed that all N-Tat samples carried the N-L708 mutation. Some Hungarian, Sekler, and Uzbek samples were L1034 SNP positive, while all Mongolians, Buryats, Khanty, Finnish, and Roma samples yielded a negative result for this marker. Based on the above, L1034 marker seems to be a subgroup of N-Tat, which is typical for Mansi and Hungarian-speaking ethnic groups so far. Based on our time to most recent common ancestor data, the L1034 marker arose 2,500 years before present. The overall frequency of the L1034 is very low among the analyzed populations, thus it does not necessarily mean that proto-Hungarians and Mansi descend from common ancestors. It does provide, however, a limited genetic link supporting language contact. Both Hungarians and Mansi have much more complex genetic population history than the traditional tree-based linguistic model would suggest.
Link
Y-SNP L1034: limited genetic link between Mansi and Hungarian-speaking populations.
Fehér T1, Németh E, Vándor A, Kornienko IV, Csáji LK, Pamjav H.
Abstract
Genetic studies noted that the Hungarian Y-chromosomal gene pool significantly differs from other Uralic-speaking populations. Hungarians show very limited or no presence of haplogroup N-Tat, which is frequent among other Uralic-speaking populations. We proposed that some genetic links need to be observed between the linguistically related Hungarian and Mansi populations.This is the first attempt to divide haplogroup N-Tat into subhaplogroups by testing new downstream SNP markers L708 and L1034. Sixty Northern Mansi samples were collected in Western Siberia and genotyped for Y-chromosomal haplotypes and haplogroups. We found 14 Mansi and 92 N-Tat samples from 7 populations. Comparative results showed that all N-Tat samples carried the N-L708 mutation. Some Hungarian, Sekler, and Uzbek samples were L1034 SNP positive, while all Mongolians, Buryats, Khanty, Finnish, and Roma samples yielded a negative result for this marker. Based on the above, L1034 marker seems to be a subgroup of N-Tat, which is typical for Mansi and Hungarian-speaking ethnic groups so far. Based on our time to most recent common ancestor data, the L1034 marker arose 2,500 years before present. The overall frequency of the L1034 is very low among the analyzed populations, thus it does not necessarily mean that proto-Hungarians and Mansi descend from common ancestors. It does provide, however, a limited genetic link supporting language contact. Both Hungarians and Mansi have much more complex genetic population history than the traditional tree-based linguistic model would suggest.
Link
August 17, 2014
Indo-Europeans preceded Finno-Ugrians in Finland and Estonia
According to an abstract of a Ph.D thesis (below). This would appear to work well with the dating of the signature Y-chromosome haplogroup of Finno-Ugrians.
Bidrag till Fennoskandiens språkliga förhistoria i tid och rum (Heikkilä, Mikko)
My academic dissertation "Bidrag till Fennoskandiens språkliga förhistoria i tid och rum" ("Spatiotemporal Contributions to the Linguistic Prehistory of Fennoscandia") is an interdisciplinary study of the linguistic prehistory of Northern Europe chiefly in the Iron Age (ca. 700 BC―AD 1200), but also to some extent in the Bronze Age (ca. 1700―700 BC) and the Early Finnish Middle Ages (ca. AD 1200―1323). The disciplines represented in this study are Germanistics, Nordistics, Finnougristics, history and archaeology. The language-forms studied are Proto-Germanic, Proto-Scandinavian, Proto-Finnic and Proto-Sami. This dissertation uses historical-comparative linguistics and especially loanword study to examine the relative and absolute chronology of the sound changes that have taken place in the proto-forms of the Germanic, Finnic and Samic languages. Phonetic history is the basis of historical linguistics studying the diachronic development of languages. To my knowledge, this study is the first in the history of the disciplines mentioned above to examine the systematic dating of the phonetic development of these proto-languages in relation to each other. In addition to the dating and relating of the phonetic development of the proto-languages, I study Fennoscandian toponyms. The oldest datable and etymologizable place-names throw new light on the ethnic history and history of settlement of Fennoscandia. For instance, I deal with the etymology of the following place-names: Ahvenanmaa/Åland, Eura(joki), Inari(järvi), Kemi(joki), Kvenland, Kymi(joki), Sarsa, Satakunta, Vanaja, Vantaa and Ähtäri.
My dissertation shows that Proto-Germanic, Proto-Scandinavian, Proto-Finnic and Proto-Sami all date to different periods of the Iron Age. I argue that the present study along with my earlier published research also proves that a (West-)Uralic language – the pre-form of the Finnic and Samic languages – was spoken in the region of the present-day Finland in the Bronze Age, but not earlier than that. In the centuries before the Common Era, Proto-Sami was spoken in the whole region of what is now called Finland, excluding Lapland. At the beginning of the Common Era, Proto-Sami was spoken in the whole region of Finland, including Southern Finland, from where the Sami idiom first began to recede. An archaic (Northwest-)Indo-European language and a subsequently extinct Paleo-European language were likely spoken in what is now called Finland and Estonia, when the linguistic ancestors of the Finns and the Sami arrived in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region from the Volga-Kama region probably at the beginning of the Bronze Age. For example, the names Suomi ʻFinlandʼ and Viro ʻEstoniaʼ are likely to have been borrowed from the Indo-European idiom in question. (Proto-)Germanic waves of influence have come from Scandinavia to Finland since the Bronze Age. A considerable part of the Finnic and Samic vocabulary is indeed Germanic loanwords of different ages which form strata in these languages. Besides mere etymological research, these numerous Germanic loanwords make it possible to relate to each other the temporal development of the language-forms that have been in contact with each other. That is what I have done in my extensive dissertation, which attempts to be both a detailed and a holistic treatise.
May 29, 2014
A twist in Austronesian origins
The Taiwanese origin of Austronesians is widely accepted. A new preprint confirms this theory, but adds a new twist to the story of Austronesian dispersals, as it seems that in their western expansion, Austronesians picked up some Austroasiatic ancestry. This means either that Austroasiatic speakers preceded them in islands where Austronesian languages are now spoken, or that the Austronesians picked up this kind of ancestry in the mainland before settling in the islands.
bioRxiv, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/005603
Reconstructing Austronesian population history in Island Southeast Asia
Mark Lipson et al.
Austronesian languages are spread across half the globe, from Easter Island to Madagascar. Evidence from linguistics and archaeology indicates that the "Austronesian expansion," which began 4-5 thousand years ago, likely had roots in Taiwan, but the ancestry of present-day Austronesian-speaking populations remains controversial. Here, focusing primarily on Island Southeast Asia, we analyze genome-wide data from 56 populations using new methods for tracing ancestral gene flow. We show that all sampled Austronesian groups harbor ancestry that is more closely related to aboriginal Taiwanese than to any present-day mainland population. Surprisingly, western Island Southeast Asian populations have also inherited ancestry from a source nested within the variation of present-day populations speaking Austro-Asiatic languages, which have historically been nearly exclusive to the mainland. Thus, either there was once a substantial Austro-Asiatic presence in Island Southeast Asia, or Austronesian speakers migrated to and through the mainland, admixing there before continuing to western Indonesia.
Link
bioRxiv, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/005603
Reconstructing Austronesian population history in Island Southeast Asia
Mark Lipson et al.
Austronesian languages are spread across half the globe, from Easter Island to Madagascar. Evidence from linguistics and archaeology indicates that the "Austronesian expansion," which began 4-5 thousand years ago, likely had roots in Taiwan, but the ancestry of present-day Austronesian-speaking populations remains controversial. Here, focusing primarily on Island Southeast Asia, we analyze genome-wide data from 56 populations using new methods for tracing ancestral gene flow. We show that all sampled Austronesian groups harbor ancestry that is more closely related to aboriginal Taiwanese than to any present-day mainland population. Surprisingly, western Island Southeast Asian populations have also inherited ancestry from a source nested within the variation of present-day populations speaking Austro-Asiatic languages, which have historically been nearly exclusive to the mainland. Thus, either there was once a substantial Austro-Asiatic presence in Island Southeast Asia, or Austronesian speakers migrated to and through the mainland, admixing there before continuing to western Indonesia.
Link
May 01, 2014
The Mystery of Language evolution (Hauser et al. 2014)
Many big names grace this paper which appears to pretty much say that know close to nothing about how language has evolved. The authors don't seem to buy into the theory that the hyoid bone of the Kebara Neandertal proves that H. neanderthalensis had language (which would probably push the origin of language to a time much earlier than the invention of recognizably modern human culture).
In a sense we have no data because our evidence for language is from recent millennia of our own species and older hominins did not exhibit behaviors that would unambiguously require language. So, the origin of language may remain obscure unless some breakthrough identifies the genetic substrate of language whose existence in different ancient hominins can then be ascertained.
Front. Psychol. | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401
The mystery of language evolution
Marc D. Hauser1*, Charles Yang2, Robert C. Berwick3, Ian Tattersall4, Michael Ryan5, Jeffrey Watumull6, Noam Chomsky3 and Richard Lewontin7
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, 1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; 2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; 3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; 4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language’s origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.
Link
In a sense we have no data because our evidence for language is from recent millennia of our own species and older hominins did not exhibit behaviors that would unambiguously require language. So, the origin of language may remain obscure unless some breakthrough identifies the genetic substrate of language whose existence in different ancient hominins can then be ascertained.
Front. Psychol. | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401
The mystery of language evolution
Marc D. Hauser1*, Charles Yang2, Robert C. Berwick3, Ian Tattersall4, Michael Ryan5, Jeffrey Watumull6, Noam Chomsky3 and Richard Lewontin7
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, 1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; 2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; 3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; 4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language’s origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.
Link
April 17, 2014
mtDNA history of Oceania (Duggan et al. 2014)
AJHG doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.03.014
Maternal History of Oceania from Complete mtDNA Genomes: Contrasting Ancient Diversity with Recent Homogenization Due to the Austronesian Expansion
Ana T. Duggan et al.
Archaeology, linguistics, and existing genetic studies indicate that Oceania was settled by two major waves of migration. The first migration took place approximately 40 thousand years ago and these migrants, Papuans, colonized much of Near Oceania. Approximately 3.5 thousand years ago, a second expansion of Austronesian-speakers arrived in Near Oceania and the descendants of these people spread to the far corners of the Pacific, colonizing Remote Oceania. To assess the female contribution of these two human expansions to modern populations and to investigate the potential impact of other migrations, we obtained 1,331 whole mitochondrial genome sequences from 34 populations spanning both Near and Remote Oceania. Our results quantify the magnitude of the Austronesian expansion and demonstrate the homogenizing effect of this expansion on almost all studied populations. With regards to Papuan influence, autochthonous haplogroups support the hypothesis of a long history in Near Oceania, with some lineages suggesting a time depth of 60 thousand years, and offer insight into historical interpopulation dynamics. Santa Cruz, a population located in Remote Oceania, is an anomaly with extreme frequencies of autochthonous haplogroups of Near Oceanian origin; simulations to investigate whether this might reflect a pre-Austronesian versus Austronesian settlement of the island failed to provide unequivocal support for either scenario.
Link
Maternal History of Oceania from Complete mtDNA Genomes: Contrasting Ancient Diversity with Recent Homogenization Due to the Austronesian Expansion
Ana T. Duggan et al.
Archaeology, linguistics, and existing genetic studies indicate that Oceania was settled by two major waves of migration. The first migration took place approximately 40 thousand years ago and these migrants, Papuans, colonized much of Near Oceania. Approximately 3.5 thousand years ago, a second expansion of Austronesian-speakers arrived in Near Oceania and the descendants of these people spread to the far corners of the Pacific, colonizing Remote Oceania. To assess the female contribution of these two human expansions to modern populations and to investigate the potential impact of other migrations, we obtained 1,331 whole mitochondrial genome sequences from 34 populations spanning both Near and Remote Oceania. Our results quantify the magnitude of the Austronesian expansion and demonstrate the homogenizing effect of this expansion on almost all studied populations. With regards to Papuan influence, autochthonous haplogroups support the hypothesis of a long history in Near Oceania, with some lineages suggesting a time depth of 60 thousand years, and offer insight into historical interpopulation dynamics. Santa Cruz, a population located in Remote Oceania, is an anomaly with extreme frequencies of autochthonous haplogroups of Near Oceanian origin; simulations to investigate whether this might reflect a pre-Austronesian versus Austronesian settlement of the island failed to provide unequivocal support for either scenario.
Link
March 16, 2014
Back-migration of Yeniseian into Asia from Beringia
Linguistic Phylogenies Support Back-Migration from Beringia to Asia
Mark A. Sicoli, Gary Holton
Recent arguments connecting Na-Dene languages of North America with Yeniseian languages of Siberia have been used to assert proof for the origin of Native Americans in central or western Asia. We apply phylogenetic methods to test support for this hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis that Yeniseian represents a back-migration to Asia from a Beringian ancestral population. We coded a linguistic dataset of typological features and used neighbor-joining network algorithms and Bayesian model comparison based on Bayes factors to test the fit between the data and the linguistic phylogenies modeling two dispersal hypotheses. Our results support that a Dene-Yeniseian connection more likely represents radiation out of Beringia with back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or western Asia to North America.
Link
March 09, 2014
The place of the Armenian language in the Indo-European family
A very interesting talk at the Library of Congress making a good case for a Greek-Phrygian-Armenian clade within the Indo-European family.
Of course the testimony of Herodotus is -at least for me- the most convincing argument for an ultimately Balkan origin of the Phrygo-Armenians.
Modern Armenians are quite distinct from modern populations of the Balkans but who knows how both they and the populations of the Balkans have changed since the beginning of the Iron Age when the Phrygians established themselves in Asia Minor? The recent study by Hellenthal et al. did not find any good evidence for recent admixture in Armenians but this might be due to (i) Armenians being unmixed descendants of Proto-Armenians, (ii) Armenians being near-unmixed descendants of pre-Armenians, or (iii) the method not having enough power to detect admixture.
My guess is that the relative remoteness of the Armenian highlands coupled with the heterodox position of the Armenian church hindered substantial gene flow into the Armenian population over at least the last 1,500 years.
Of course the testimony of Herodotus is -at least for me- the most convincing argument for an ultimately Balkan origin of the Phrygo-Armenians.
Modern Armenians are quite distinct from modern populations of the Balkans but who knows how both they and the populations of the Balkans have changed since the beginning of the Iron Age when the Phrygians established themselves in Asia Minor? The recent study by Hellenthal et al. did not find any good evidence for recent admixture in Armenians but this might be due to (i) Armenians being unmixed descendants of Proto-Armenians, (ii) Armenians being near-unmixed descendants of pre-Armenians, or (iii) the method not having enough power to detect admixture.
My guess is that the relative remoteness of the Armenian highlands coupled with the heterodox position of the Armenian church hindered substantial gene flow into the Armenian population over at least the last 1,500 years.
December 22, 2013
Neandertals could talk
PLoS ONE 8(12): e82261. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082261
Micro-Biomechanics of the Kebara 2 Hyoid and Its Implications for Speech in Neanderthals
Ruggero D’Anastasio et al.
The description of a Neanderthal hyoid from Kebara Cave (Israel) in 1989 fuelled scientific debate on the evolution of speech and complex language. Gross anatomy of the Kebara 2 hyoid differs little from that of modern humans. However, whether Homo neanderthalensis could use speech or complex language remains controversial. Similarity in overall shape does not necessarily demonstrate that the Kebara 2 hyoid was used in the same way as that of Homo sapiens. The mechanical performance of whole bones is partly controlled by internal trabecular geometries, regulated by bone-remodelling in response to the forces applied. Here we show that the Neanderthal and modern human hyoids also present very similar internal architectures and micro-biomechanical behaviours. Our study incorporates detailed analysis of histology, meticulous reconstruction of musculature, and computational biomechanical analysis with models incorporating internal micro-geometry. Because internal architecture reflects the loadings to which a bone is routinely subjected, our findings are consistent with a capacity for speech in the Neanderthals.
Link
Micro-Biomechanics of the Kebara 2 Hyoid and Its Implications for Speech in Neanderthals
Ruggero D’Anastasio et al.
The description of a Neanderthal hyoid from Kebara Cave (Israel) in 1989 fuelled scientific debate on the evolution of speech and complex language. Gross anatomy of the Kebara 2 hyoid differs little from that of modern humans. However, whether Homo neanderthalensis could use speech or complex language remains controversial. Similarity in overall shape does not necessarily demonstrate that the Kebara 2 hyoid was used in the same way as that of Homo sapiens. The mechanical performance of whole bones is partly controlled by internal trabecular geometries, regulated by bone-remodelling in response to the forces applied. Here we show that the Neanderthal and modern human hyoids also present very similar internal architectures and micro-biomechanical behaviours. Our study incorporates detailed analysis of histology, meticulous reconstruction of musculature, and computational biomechanical analysis with models incorporating internal micro-geometry. Because internal architecture reflects the loadings to which a bone is routinely subjected, our findings are consistent with a capacity for speech in the Neanderthals.
Link
August 27, 2013
The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family
Journal of Language Relationship • Вопросы языкового родства • 10 (2013) • Pp. 85—137
The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: the relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian*
Hrach Martirosyan
The main purpose of this paper is to present lexical correspondences that unite Armenian with Greek and/or Indo-Iranian. They include shared innovations on the one hand, and isolated lexemes on the other. These two lexical corpora — lexical innovations on an inherited basis and isolated words — can be placed within the same temporal and spatial framework. After the Indo-European dispersal Proto-Armenian would have continued to come into contact with genetically related Indo-European dialects. Simultaneously, it would certainly also have been in contact with neighbouring non-Indo-European languages. A word can be of a substrate origin if it is characterized by: (1) limited geographical distribution; (2) unusual phonology and word formation; (3) characteristic semantics. The material presented here, albeit not exhaustive, allows to preliminarily conclude that Armenian, Greek, (Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other. Within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (to the west) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (to the east). The Indo-Iranians then moved eastwards, while the Proto-Armenians and Proto-Greeks remained in a common geographical region for a long period and developed numerous shared innovations. At a later stage, together or independently, they borrowed a large number of words from the Mediterranean / Pontic substrate language(s), mostly cultural and agricultural words, as well as animal and plant designations. On the other hand, Armenian shows a considerable number of lexical correspondences with European branches of the Indo-European language family, a large portion of which too should be explained in terms of substrate rather than Indo-European heritage.
Link (pdf)
The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: the relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian*
Hrach Martirosyan
The main purpose of this paper is to present lexical correspondences that unite Armenian with Greek and/or Indo-Iranian. They include shared innovations on the one hand, and isolated lexemes on the other. These two lexical corpora — lexical innovations on an inherited basis and isolated words — can be placed within the same temporal and spatial framework. After the Indo-European dispersal Proto-Armenian would have continued to come into contact with genetically related Indo-European dialects. Simultaneously, it would certainly also have been in contact with neighbouring non-Indo-European languages. A word can be of a substrate origin if it is characterized by: (1) limited geographical distribution; (2) unusual phonology and word formation; (3) characteristic semantics. The material presented here, albeit not exhaustive, allows to preliminarily conclude that Armenian, Greek, (Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other. Within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (to the west) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (to the east). The Indo-Iranians then moved eastwards, while the Proto-Armenians and Proto-Greeks remained in a common geographical region for a long period and developed numerous shared innovations. At a later stage, together or independently, they borrowed a large number of words from the Mediterranean / Pontic substrate language(s), mostly cultural and agricultural words, as well as animal and plant designations. On the other hand, Armenian shows a considerable number of lexical correspondences with European branches of the Indo-European language family, a large portion of which too should be explained in terms of substrate rather than Indo-European heritage.
Link (pdf)
August 04, 2013
The Origin of Us
A whole bunch of very interesting videos have been posted on youtube from this interesting symposium that took place this May. A few that caught my eye:
CARTA: The Origin of Us - Fossils of Modern Humans Interbreeding within and outside of Africa
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Richard Ed Green: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans outside Africa
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Christopher Ehret: Relationships of Ancient African Languages
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Chris Stringer: Fossil Record of Anatomically Modern Humans
CARTA: The Origin of Us--Rick Potts: African Climate of the Last 400000 Years
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Ofer Bar-Yosef: Evidence for the Spread of Modern Humans
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Michael Hammer: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans in Africa
This should be very interesting watching. Feel free to leave a comment if you notice anything new or interesting in any of the videos.
CARTA: The Origin of Us - Fossils of Modern Humans Interbreeding within and outside of Africa
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Richard Ed Green: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans outside Africa
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Christopher Ehret: Relationships of Ancient African Languages
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Chris Stringer: Fossil Record of Anatomically Modern Humans
CARTA: The Origin of Us--Rick Potts: African Climate of the Last 400000 Years
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Ofer Bar-Yosef: Evidence for the Spread of Modern Humans
CARTA: The Origin of Us -- Michael Hammer: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans in Africa
This should be very interesting watching. Feel free to leave a comment if you notice anything new or interesting in any of the videos.
June 25, 2013
Indo-European homeland and migrations: half a century of studies and discussions (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 2013)
An extensive English summary of an article in Russian by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov almost 30 years since the publication of their original book. There are other articles in the volume of the JOLR presenting different views (unfortunately most behind a paywall).
Indo-European homeland and migrations: half a century of studies and discussions [In Russian with English summary]
The problem of the initial place from which the original Indo- European dialects spread over Eurasia has been studied by several generations of scholars. Few alternative points of view have been proposed: first an area near the North Sea (in the works of some scholars of the border of the 19th and 20th centuries), then the North coast of the Black Sea (an old idea of Schrader revived by Maria Gimbutas and her followers) or an area closer to the more eastern (Volga-Ural) parts of Central Eurasia. 40 years ago we suggested first in a talk at a conference, then in a series of articles and in a resulting book (published in Russian in 1984) that the Northern part of the Near East (an area close to North-East Syria and North Mesopotamia) may be considered as a possible candidate for the Indo-European homeland; similar suggestions were made by C. Renfrew and other scholars in their later works. Recent research on these topics has brought up additional evidence that seems to prove the Near Eastern hypothesis for the time that had immediately preceded the dispersal of the Indo-European protolanguage. Indirect evidence on the early presence of Indo-Europeans in the areas close to the Near East can be found in the traces of ancient contacts between linguistic families in this part of Eurasia. Such contacts between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian have been suggested in the work of T. Gamkrelidze and G. Mach’avariani more than 60 years ago. The following studies have established a number of important loanwords from Proto-Indo-European in Proto-Kartvelian. Particularly interesting discoveries in this field were made by the late G. A. Klimov. He has found many new common elements of the two families in addition to a relatively long list in our joint work. The main difficulty in interpreting the results of his investigations is connected to the problem of a possible common Nostratic origin both of Proto-Indo-European and of Proto-Kartvelian. If these two linguistic families were originally cognate, then some part of the correspondences found by Klimov and other scholars might be traced back to the early period of Proto-Nostratic (more than 10 000 years ago). Only those words that were not inherited from this ancient time are important as a proof of the later presence of Proto-Indo-European in the area close to the Proto-Kartvelian (to the southwest of the Transcaucasian area in which the latter spread in the historic time). In our book, published in 1984, we suggested some common terms shared by these languages, explaining them as possible traces of later Indo-European (probably Indo-Iranian) migrations through the Caucasus. The study of this problem has been enriched through the recent research on Proto-North Caucasian. S. L. Nikolaev and S. A. Starostin have compiled a large etymological dictionary of this family, furthering the comparative studies started by Prince N. S. Trubetzkoy. Starostin has gathered a large collection of the terms of material culture common to North Caucasian and Indo-European. They include many names of domestic animals and animal body parts or products of cattle-breeding, plants and implements. In a special work on this subject Starostin suggested that all these terms were borrowed in the area of the Near East to the South of Transcaucasia in the early 5th mil. BC. Although we still use the traditional term “North Caucasian”, it is not geographically correct even if applied to such living languages as Abkhaz and to the extinct Ubykh (spoken originally at the southern part of the South-West Transcaucasian area). Since both Hurro-Urartian and Hattic (two ancient dialects of this linguistic group) were spoken in the regions to the South of Transcaucasia already in the 3rd mil. BC, it becomes possible to pinpoint the homeland of the whole family (which at that time was not North Caucasian) in the same area close to the supposed Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian homelands. The fricative š in the Hurrian name for ‘horse’, eššə, and an affricate *č (> š) in the forms of the other North Caucasian dialects correspond to the Proto-Indo-European palatal stop *k’ that has become an affricate *č and then a fricative š /s in the Indo-European languages of the satəm type. Similar changes are present in the other borrowings discussed by Starostin. He supposed that the common words discovered by him were mostly borrowed from Proto-North Caucasian (or from a dialect of it) into Proto-Indo-European. The opposite direction of borrowing from an Indo-European dialect of a satəm type can be suggested due to the typologically valid laws of sound change. But no matter which direction of the borrowing should be chosen, the existence of these loanwords is beyond doubt. They clearly point to the location of the Indo-European homeland. In our monograph we suggested that several words shared by Semitic and Indo-European (such as the ancient term for ‘wine’, Hittite wiyana) can be considered Proto-Indo-European borrowings (as distinct from the rest of the most ancient old Semitic or Afro-Asiatic loanwords in Proto-Indo-European). S. A. Starostin suggested that a large number of (mainly West) Semitic words that did not have correspondences in the other Afro-Asiatic languages had been borrowed from Proto-Indo-European. He came to the conclusion: “the original Indo-European (Indo-Hittite) homeland was somewhere to the North of the Fertile Crescent from where the descendents of Indo-Hittites could have moved in two directions (starting with early 5th millennium BC) to the South where they came into the contact with the Semites, and indeed could have driven a part of them further to the South, and to the North (North-East) whence they ultimately spread both to Europe and to India”. The interference of the early dialects of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Semitic and Proto-Kartvelian to which the early Proto-“North” Caucasian can be added might have led to the formation of a sort of linguistic zone (Sprachbund) that not only shared many words pertaining to a new farming economy, but also had several phonological and grammatical features in common. After we had published our hypothesis on the Near Eastern homeland of the Indo-Europeans, several scholars asked us why, at a time when writing had already been invented, there were no written documents testifying to the presence of Indo-Europeans in these areas. It seems that now there are several possible answers to the question. The great specialist on Iranian, W. B. Henning, who had worked for many years on the problem of the name of Tocharians, suggested in a posthumous article that their early ancestors were Gutians who had invaded Mesopotamia in ca. 2350—2200 BC. In an article written after we had already published our book, we have developed Henning’s idea (based mainly on the etymological links of Near Eastern Guti and Tukri and Central Asian names of corresponding Indo-European Kuchean and Tocharian ethnic groups), also paying attention to the possible explanation of some names of Gutian kings preserved in Sumerian texts. Recently it has been suggested that an unknown “Pre-Sumerian” language, reconstructed on the basis of the phonetic values of many cuneiform signs, was an archaic “Euphratic” Indo-European dialect spoken in Southern Mesopotamia in the second half of the 4th mil. BC. According to this hypothesis, the phonetic values of approximately one hundred of the early signs that are different from the Sumerian ones go back to the Euphratic words. A large number of Anatolian personal names (of a very archaic Indo-European type) have been found in the Old Assyrian texts from trade colonies in Asia Minor. The continuation of the excavations in Kanish that have yielded more than 23000 cuneiform tablets has made it possible to discover in them many Anatolian Indo-European names and loanwords. The Old Assyrian documents in Kanish are encountered in the archaeological levels II and Ib dated by the first centuries of the 2nd mil. BC (on the base of the recently found lists of eponyms); they precede Old Hittite texts for ca. 250 years. At that time the two Anatolian groups of dialects — a Northern (Hittite) one, displaying centum dialect features, and a Southern (Luwian), partly similar to the satəm languages — were already quite distinct. From the very beginning, the idea of the Indo-European homeland in the Near East was connected to the discovery of a possible link between the appearance of speakers of Indo-European dialects in Europe and the spread of the new farming technology. This trend of thought has been developed in the archeological works of Sir Colin Renfrew. Subsequent attempts to support this hypothetical connection were made by comparing genetic data on the time and space characteristics of the European population. The farming terms common to Indo-European and other linguistic families discussed above show that the innovations were not restricted to one group of languages and were transmitted and exchanged between different ethnic formations. The area of the interference of these families coincides with the kernel of the rising farming in the Near East. That process of global (multilingual and multicultural) change had led to the diffusion of the results of the Neolithic revolution. The main directions of this diffusion coincide with the trends of the Indo-European migrations, but the new objects might have been introduced earlier than some of their Indo-European names and the latter might precede the coming of those who coined the terms. The spread of Near Eastern innovations in Europe roughly coincides with the split of Proto-Indo-European (possibly in the early 5th mil. BC), but some elements of the new technology and economy might have penetrated it much earlier (partly through the farmers close to the Tyrrhenian population as represented 5300 years ago by the genome of the Tyrolean Iceman). The diffusion took several thousand years and was probably already all over Europe ca. 3550 BC. At that time Indo-European migrations were only beginning. The speakers of the dialects of Proto-Indo-European living near the kernel of the technological revolution in Anatolia should have acquired the main results of this development. The growth of farming economy in Europe became more active with the split of the proto-language and the dispersal of the Indo-Europeans. The astonishing scope and speed of that process were afforded by the use of the domesticated horse and wheeled vehicles. The Indo-Europeans did not have to be pioneers in this field, but they were probably skillful in spreading other peoples’ innovations. Recent work on the Botai culture of North Kazakhstan makes it possible to suppose a contribution of the Proto-Yeniseian people to the development of horse domestication. For approximately fifteen hundred years serious preparatory work on horse domestication and the use of wheeled vehicles had been going on in different parts of Eurasia. Then, almost suddenly, the results are witnessed. On the border of the 3rd and 2nd mil. BC both of these important innovations appear together, usually in a context implying the presence of Indo-Europeans: traces of Near East-type chariots and the ritual use of the horse are clear in (probably Ancient Iranian) Margiana (Gonur), we see chariots on the Anatolian type of seals in Kanish; Hurrian sculptures and other symbols of horse abound in Urkeš as if foretelling the future Mespotamian-Aryan and Hurrian excellent training of horses in Mitanni (as later in Urartu). One of the first examples of the sacrificial horses used together with chariots in an archaic ritual was found in Sintashta; the following studies of the cities of the Transuralian Sintashta-Arkaim area made it clear that some Indo-European (and maybe Iranian as well) elements were at least partly present there. The movement of Indo-Europeans to the north of the Caspian Sea in the northeast direction documented in the Sintashta-Arkaim complex led them much farther to the Altai-Sayany area where recent genetic investigations found traces of a Caucasoid element. Another Indo-European group moving in a parallel eastward direction using the South Silk Road caused the presence of a similar anthropological group among the population of Central Asia. It may be supposed that the Caucasoid anthropological type of the Iranian and/or Tocharian population of Eastern Turkestan, attested in the mummies recently found there as well as in the contemporary images of the native people, should be considered as the result of these migrations from the West to the East. The problem whether the boats played a role comparable to that of chariots at the time of early migrations is still to be decided by maritime archaeology. It seems that before the efficient use of chariots and horses, long-term mass movements were hardly possible. The first changes in the geographical position of separate dialects, e.g. when the Anatolians separated the Greeks from the rest of the East Indo-European group (that included the Armenians and Indo-Iranians), were caused by rather small-scale migrations close to the original homeland in the Near East.
Link
Indo-European homeland and migrations: half a century of studies and discussions [In Russian with English summary]
The problem of the initial place from which the original Indo- European dialects spread over Eurasia has been studied by several generations of scholars. Few alternative points of view have been proposed: first an area near the North Sea (in the works of some scholars of the border of the 19th and 20th centuries), then the North coast of the Black Sea (an old idea of Schrader revived by Maria Gimbutas and her followers) or an area closer to the more eastern (Volga-Ural) parts of Central Eurasia. 40 years ago we suggested first in a talk at a conference, then in a series of articles and in a resulting book (published in Russian in 1984) that the Northern part of the Near East (an area close to North-East Syria and North Mesopotamia) may be considered as a possible candidate for the Indo-European homeland; similar suggestions were made by C. Renfrew and other scholars in their later works. Recent research on these topics has brought up additional evidence that seems to prove the Near Eastern hypothesis for the time that had immediately preceded the dispersal of the Indo-European protolanguage. Indirect evidence on the early presence of Indo-Europeans in the areas close to the Near East can be found in the traces of ancient contacts between linguistic families in this part of Eurasia. Such contacts between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian have been suggested in the work of T. Gamkrelidze and G. Mach’avariani more than 60 years ago. The following studies have established a number of important loanwords from Proto-Indo-European in Proto-Kartvelian. Particularly interesting discoveries in this field were made by the late G. A. Klimov. He has found many new common elements of the two families in addition to a relatively long list in our joint work. The main difficulty in interpreting the results of his investigations is connected to the problem of a possible common Nostratic origin both of Proto-Indo-European and of Proto-Kartvelian. If these two linguistic families were originally cognate, then some part of the correspondences found by Klimov and other scholars might be traced back to the early period of Proto-Nostratic (more than 10 000 years ago). Only those words that were not inherited from this ancient time are important as a proof of the later presence of Proto-Indo-European in the area close to the Proto-Kartvelian (to the southwest of the Transcaucasian area in which the latter spread in the historic time). In our book, published in 1984, we suggested some common terms shared by these languages, explaining them as possible traces of later Indo-European (probably Indo-Iranian) migrations through the Caucasus. The study of this problem has been enriched through the recent research on Proto-North Caucasian. S. L. Nikolaev and S. A. Starostin have compiled a large etymological dictionary of this family, furthering the comparative studies started by Prince N. S. Trubetzkoy. Starostin has gathered a large collection of the terms of material culture common to North Caucasian and Indo-European. They include many names of domestic animals and animal body parts or products of cattle-breeding, plants and implements. In a special work on this subject Starostin suggested that all these terms were borrowed in the area of the Near East to the South of Transcaucasia in the early 5th mil. BC. Although we still use the traditional term “North Caucasian”, it is not geographically correct even if applied to such living languages as Abkhaz and to the extinct Ubykh (spoken originally at the southern part of the South-West Transcaucasian area). Since both Hurro-Urartian and Hattic (two ancient dialects of this linguistic group) were spoken in the regions to the South of Transcaucasia already in the 3rd mil. BC, it becomes possible to pinpoint the homeland of the whole family (which at that time was not North Caucasian) in the same area close to the supposed Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian homelands. The fricative š in the Hurrian name for ‘horse’, eššə, and an affricate *č (> š) in the forms of the other North Caucasian dialects correspond to the Proto-Indo-European palatal stop *k’ that has become an affricate *č and then a fricative š /s in the Indo-European languages of the satəm type. Similar changes are present in the other borrowings discussed by Starostin. He supposed that the common words discovered by him were mostly borrowed from Proto-North Caucasian (or from a dialect of it) into Proto-Indo-European. The opposite direction of borrowing from an Indo-European dialect of a satəm type can be suggested due to the typologically valid laws of sound change. But no matter which direction of the borrowing should be chosen, the existence of these loanwords is beyond doubt. They clearly point to the location of the Indo-European homeland. In our monograph we suggested that several words shared by Semitic and Indo-European (such as the ancient term for ‘wine’, Hittite wiyana) can be considered Proto-Indo-European borrowings (as distinct from the rest of the most ancient old Semitic or Afro-Asiatic loanwords in Proto-Indo-European). S. A. Starostin suggested that a large number of (mainly West) Semitic words that did not have correspondences in the other Afro-Asiatic languages had been borrowed from Proto-Indo-European. He came to the conclusion: “the original Indo-European (Indo-Hittite) homeland was somewhere to the North of the Fertile Crescent from where the descendents of Indo-Hittites could have moved in two directions (starting with early 5th millennium BC) to the South where they came into the contact with the Semites, and indeed could have driven a part of them further to the South, and to the North (North-East) whence they ultimately spread both to Europe and to India”. The interference of the early dialects of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Semitic and Proto-Kartvelian to which the early Proto-“North” Caucasian can be added might have led to the formation of a sort of linguistic zone (Sprachbund) that not only shared many words pertaining to a new farming economy, but also had several phonological and grammatical features in common. After we had published our hypothesis on the Near Eastern homeland of the Indo-Europeans, several scholars asked us why, at a time when writing had already been invented, there were no written documents testifying to the presence of Indo-Europeans in these areas. It seems that now there are several possible answers to the question. The great specialist on Iranian, W. B. Henning, who had worked for many years on the problem of the name of Tocharians, suggested in a posthumous article that their early ancestors were Gutians who had invaded Mesopotamia in ca. 2350—2200 BC. In an article written after we had already published our book, we have developed Henning’s idea (based mainly on the etymological links of Near Eastern Guti and Tukri and Central Asian names of corresponding Indo-European Kuchean and Tocharian ethnic groups), also paying attention to the possible explanation of some names of Gutian kings preserved in Sumerian texts. Recently it has been suggested that an unknown “Pre-Sumerian” language, reconstructed on the basis of the phonetic values of many cuneiform signs, was an archaic “Euphratic” Indo-European dialect spoken in Southern Mesopotamia in the second half of the 4th mil. BC. According to this hypothesis, the phonetic values of approximately one hundred of the early signs that are different from the Sumerian ones go back to the Euphratic words. A large number of Anatolian personal names (of a very archaic Indo-European type) have been found in the Old Assyrian texts from trade colonies in Asia Minor. The continuation of the excavations in Kanish that have yielded more than 23000 cuneiform tablets has made it possible to discover in them many Anatolian Indo-European names and loanwords. The Old Assyrian documents in Kanish are encountered in the archaeological levels II and Ib dated by the first centuries of the 2nd mil. BC (on the base of the recently found lists of eponyms); they precede Old Hittite texts for ca. 250 years. At that time the two Anatolian groups of dialects — a Northern (Hittite) one, displaying centum dialect features, and a Southern (Luwian), partly similar to the satəm languages — were already quite distinct. From the very beginning, the idea of the Indo-European homeland in the Near East was connected to the discovery of a possible link between the appearance of speakers of Indo-European dialects in Europe and the spread of the new farming technology. This trend of thought has been developed in the archeological works of Sir Colin Renfrew. Subsequent attempts to support this hypothetical connection were made by comparing genetic data on the time and space characteristics of the European population. The farming terms common to Indo-European and other linguistic families discussed above show that the innovations were not restricted to one group of languages and were transmitted and exchanged between different ethnic formations. The area of the interference of these families coincides with the kernel of the rising farming in the Near East. That process of global (multilingual and multicultural) change had led to the diffusion of the results of the Neolithic revolution. The main directions of this diffusion coincide with the trends of the Indo-European migrations, but the new objects might have been introduced earlier than some of their Indo-European names and the latter might precede the coming of those who coined the terms. The spread of Near Eastern innovations in Europe roughly coincides with the split of Proto-Indo-European (possibly in the early 5th mil. BC), but some elements of the new technology and economy might have penetrated it much earlier (partly through the farmers close to the Tyrrhenian population as represented 5300 years ago by the genome of the Tyrolean Iceman). The diffusion took several thousand years and was probably already all over Europe ca. 3550 BC. At that time Indo-European migrations were only beginning. The speakers of the dialects of Proto-Indo-European living near the kernel of the technological revolution in Anatolia should have acquired the main results of this development. The growth of farming economy in Europe became more active with the split of the proto-language and the dispersal of the Indo-Europeans. The astonishing scope and speed of that process were afforded by the use of the domesticated horse and wheeled vehicles. The Indo-Europeans did not have to be pioneers in this field, but they were probably skillful in spreading other peoples’ innovations. Recent work on the Botai culture of North Kazakhstan makes it possible to suppose a contribution of the Proto-Yeniseian people to the development of horse domestication. For approximately fifteen hundred years serious preparatory work on horse domestication and the use of wheeled vehicles had been going on in different parts of Eurasia. Then, almost suddenly, the results are witnessed. On the border of the 3rd and 2nd mil. BC both of these important innovations appear together, usually in a context implying the presence of Indo-Europeans: traces of Near East-type chariots and the ritual use of the horse are clear in (probably Ancient Iranian) Margiana (Gonur), we see chariots on the Anatolian type of seals in Kanish; Hurrian sculptures and other symbols of horse abound in Urkeš as if foretelling the future Mespotamian-Aryan and Hurrian excellent training of horses in Mitanni (as later in Urartu). One of the first examples of the sacrificial horses used together with chariots in an archaic ritual was found in Sintashta; the following studies of the cities of the Transuralian Sintashta-Arkaim area made it clear that some Indo-European (and maybe Iranian as well) elements were at least partly present there. The movement of Indo-Europeans to the north of the Caspian Sea in the northeast direction documented in the Sintashta-Arkaim complex led them much farther to the Altai-Sayany area where recent genetic investigations found traces of a Caucasoid element. Another Indo-European group moving in a parallel eastward direction using the South Silk Road caused the presence of a similar anthropological group among the population of Central Asia. It may be supposed that the Caucasoid anthropological type of the Iranian and/or Tocharian population of Eastern Turkestan, attested in the mummies recently found there as well as in the contemporary images of the native people, should be considered as the result of these migrations from the West to the East. The problem whether the boats played a role comparable to that of chariots at the time of early migrations is still to be decided by maritime archaeology. It seems that before the efficient use of chariots and horses, long-term mass movements were hardly possible. The first changes in the geographical position of separate dialects, e.g. when the Anatolians separated the Greeks from the rest of the East Indo-European group (that included the Armenians and Indo-Iranians), were caused by rather small-scale migrations close to the original homeland in the Near East.
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May 23, 2013
Stanislav Grigoriev's "Ancient Indo-Europeans"
I had seen bits and pieces of SA Grigoriev's ideas in various publications, but it's nice to see this work in its entirety (although the reproduction of the maps doesn't seem to be very good). From the conclusion:
Interestingly, Grigoriev's reconstruction does not seem to agree with G&I's model in all its details, as the latter suggested the Halafian culture as the archaeological manifestation of the Proto-Indo-European community (picture from Wikipedia on the right).
For reasons of my own (i.e., finding the hiding place of the "West Asian" autosomal component which I believe was introduced to Europe by Indo-Europeans) it might be worth seeking a more "eastern" PIE homeland.
In any case it would be wonderful to get some archaeogenetic data from the Near East. Irrespective of one's opinion on the IE problem, most everyone would agree that this is a critical region for understanding the prehistory of Eurasia.
The Indo-European problem is a complex one, combining linguistic and archaeological evidence. In linguistics Gamkrelidze and Ivanov have suggested a system and a fundamental solution. Convincing linguistic models uniquely localising the Indo-European homeland in the Balkans, or even in the North Pontic area or Central Europe, are lacking. Often criticism of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov has been reduced to no more than a statement that archaeological evidence in favour of it is absent. As we see, this does not correspond to reality (and, by the way, did not correspond to reality before the publication of this book). There are a number of facts to prove the connections of North Eurasian and European cultures with the Near East, whilst convincing examples to demonstrate the reverse connections do not now exist. There is a purely historiographic tradition, not substantiated by facts. For the long years this tradition flourished it proved impossible to flesh it out with arguments, although skilled scholars attempted to do so. Therefore, hypotheses about the northern origin of the Indo-Europeans have practically nothing which can be used today in support, either linguistic or archaeological. The archaeological model suggested here is not complete in many respects. Many parallels may raise doubts, as it has not always been possible to back them up with completely identical artefacts. But in the consideration of distant migrations and subsequent cultural transformations, such complete similarity may be wanting.
For reasons of my own (i.e., finding the hiding place of the "West Asian" autosomal component which I believe was introduced to Europe by Indo-Europeans) it might be worth seeking a more "eastern" PIE homeland.
In any case it would be wonderful to get some archaeogenetic data from the Near East. Irrespective of one's opinion on the IE problem, most everyone would agree that this is a critical region for understanding the prehistory of Eurasia.
May 16, 2013
Evolutionary history of Uralic languages (Honkola et al. 2013)
Cultural and climatic changes shape the evolutionary history of the Uralic languages
T Honkola et al.
Quantitative phylogenetic methods have been used to study the evolutionary relationships and divergence times of biological species, and recently, these have also been applied to linguistic data to elucidate the evolutionary history of language families. In biology, the factors driving macroevolutionary processes are assumed to be either mainly biotic (the Red Queen model) or mainly abiotic (the Court Jester model) or a combination of both. The applicability of these models is assumed to depend on the temporal and spatial scale observed as biotic factors act on species divergence faster and in smaller spatial scale than the abiotic factors. Here, we used the Uralic language family to investigate whether both ‘biotic’ interactions (i.e. cultural interactions) and abiotic changes (i.e. climatic fluctuations) are also connected to language diversification. We estimated the times of divergence using Bayesian phylogenetics with a relaxed-clock method and related our results to climatic, historical and archaeological information. Our timing results paralleled the previous linguistic studies but suggested a later divergence of Finno-Ugric, Finnic and Saami languages. Some of the divergences co-occurred with climatic fluctuation and some with cultural interaction and migrations of populations. Thus, we suggest that both ‘biotic’ and abiotic factors contribute either directly or indirectly to the diversification of languages and that both models can be applied when studying language evolution.
Link
May 09, 2013
Phylogeography of Bantu languages (Currie et al. 2013)
Proc. R. Soc. B 7 July 2013 vol. 280 no. 1762 20130695
Cultural phylogeography of the Bantu Languages of sub-Saharan Africa
Thomas E. Currie et al.
There is disagreement about the routes taken by populations speaking Bantu languages as they expanded to cover much of sub-Saharan Africa. Here, we build phylogenetic trees of Bantu languages and map them onto geographical space in order to assess the likely pathway of expansion and test between dispersal scenarios. The results clearly support a scenario in which groups first moved south through the rainforest from a homeland somewhere near the Nigeria–Cameroon border. Emerging on the south side of the rainforest, one branch moved south and west. Another branch moved towards the Great Lakes, eventually giving rise to the monophyletic clade of East Bantu languages that inhabit East and Southeastern Africa. These phylogenies also reveal information about more general processes involved in the diversification of human populations into distinct ethnolinguistic groups. Our study reveals that Bantu languages show a latitudinal gradient in covering greater areas with increasing distance from the equator. Analyses suggest that this pattern reflects a true ecological relationship rather than merely being an artefact of shared history. The study shows how a phylogeographic approach can address questions relating to the specific histories of certain groups, as well as general cultural evolutionary processes.
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