Animated map shows how Indo-European languages may have evolved

[Shqipez]

This fascinating animated map provides one of the best demonstrations we've seen of how modern Indo-European languages evolved over the past 8,000 years. The Indo-European languages are a group of more than 400 languages that contains everything from Polish and French to Icelandic and Hindi, and scientists have worked out that they all originally came from one single language spoken in the region of Anatolia, in present-day Turkey.


The animation, which was created by Business Insider's science team, shows how the languages spread from Anatolia through farming to various parts of Europe and Asia, changing as they went until they eventually became the languages we recognise today. And it's pretty crazy to think that such varied dialects all came from the same starting point.

The map is based on a seminal study led by evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which was published in Science back in 2012. In his research, Atkinson used the same computational methods that geneticists use to trace flu virus outbreaks to map the spread of language evolution around the globe.

To do this, Atkinson and his team looked at common words - such as hand, foot, mother, father, fire, water - from more than 100 ancient and modern languages, and then compared how similar these words were across different languages. They then used these similarities and differences in the same way that geneticists use DNA, to create a family tree of language. This allowed them to trace all the way back along the tree to find the root of modern Indo-European languages.

Watch the animation above, and get inspired by the fact that most of our ancestors started out speaking the same language.

http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-th...y-have-evolved

[sql]

First off, it's forgetting many languages.

Second of all, IE languages began in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, not Anatolia.

[Damião de Góis]

It's doesn't seem very accurate historically.

[Shqipez]

First off, it's forgetting many languages.

Second of all, IE languages began in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, not Anatolia.

this is just a theory, just like caspian steppe. and the anatolian theory is the favorite one among researchers, I think.

it's forgetting some ancient languages. but those are hard to tell weather extinct or who evolved from who seeing as there is not enough left to come to that conclusion. I also don't understand the presence of balto-slavic, the same place where thracian is supposed to be. I don't think it includes extinct languages. in this case the caspian steppe theory makes more sense.

[Musso]

http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-th...y-have-evolved

Nice video,,,show's how outplace Altaic Turkish Language is in the scheme of history.

[Gaston]

Inaccurate, anachronistic and simplistic, I cringed so much I barely watched 2 seconds of the video. Besides, it's now clear the Steppe origin of IE is the most realistic one thanks to recent findings in ancient DNA.

Next.

[FeederOfRavens]

this is just a theory, just like caspian steppe. and the anatolian theory is the favorite one among researchers, I think.

No, the Kurgan/Steppe theory is favoured.

[Shqipez]

Inaccurate, anachronistic and simplistic, I cringed so much I barely watched 2 seconds of the video. Besides, it's now clear the Steppe origin of IE is the most realistic one thanks to recent findings in ancient DNA.

Next.

No, the Kurgan/Steppe theory is favoured.

Do you have any animated maps of these showing what this video is showing? very interested. I also always read anatolian theory is favored and it seems they speak like they have evidence for it or something. I don't know, but could it be possible its a mix of all? I mean, we agree humans into europe came into different waves, different places.

[Shqipez]

So the whole theory is then that indo-europeans ,much like the languages, moved in from Anatolia rather than steppes or central europe?