Su
08-24-2012, 07:21 AM
The origins of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, German and English have been traced to Anatolia, which is present-day Turkey, with researchers saying that this Indo-European family of languages spread out from the western Asian region about 8000 to 9500 years ago.
The researchers, led by evolutionary biologist at New Zealand's University of Auckland Quentin Atkinson, during a new study have used computational methods to analyse words from more than 100 ancient and contemporary languages.
Through this method, the scientists say they have identified Anatolia, an ancient region of western Asia which covers most of modern Turkey as the homeland of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken on every continent by a total of three billion people.
The study, published in the journal Science said there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family.
The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago, while an alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago.
The researchers used a complex technique which studies the evolution and spread of disease as well as basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses.
"We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago," the study said.
... contd.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/turkey-is-homeland-of-hindi-english-researchers/992550/
http://www.mpi.nl/news/distributionofIElanguages.jpg/image_preview
http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/indo-european-language-origin-map.jpg
And Supplementary material with lots ot other plots (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2012/08/22/337.6097.957.DC1/Bouckaert.SM.pdf) like this one:
http://uploadpic.org/storage/2011/gycZubLOGgOPAGKDfpjhsuA8O.jpg
Also:
Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say
Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family
in: Science 24 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6097 pp. 957-960
by: Remco Bouckaert, Philippe Lemey, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, Alexei J. Drummond, Russell D. Gray, Marc A. Suchard, Quentin D. Atkinson.
ABSTRACT
There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Excerpt:
"Linguists believe that the first speakers of the mother tongue, known as proto-Indo-European, were chariot-driving pastoralists who burst out of their homeland on the steppes above the Black Sea some 4,000 years ago and conquered Europe and Asia. A rival theory holds that, to the contrary, the first Indo-European speakers were peaceable farmers in Anatolia, now Turkey, some 9,000 years ago, who disseminated their language by the hoe, not the sword.
The new entrant to the debate is an evolutionary biologist, Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He and colleagues have taken the existing vocabulary and geographical range of 103 Indo-European languages and computationally walked them back in time and place to their statistically most likely origin.
The result, they announced in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, is that “we found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin.” Both the timing and the root of the tree of Indo-European languages “fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8,000 to 9,500 years ago,” they report.
... The calculation pointed to Anatolia, particularly a lozenge-shaped area in what is now southern Turkey, as the most plausible origin — a region that had also been proposed as the origin of Indo-European by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew, in 1987, because it was the source from which agriculture spread to Europe."
The Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
What do you think about this? Any shocks?
The researchers, led by evolutionary biologist at New Zealand's University of Auckland Quentin Atkinson, during a new study have used computational methods to analyse words from more than 100 ancient and contemporary languages.
Through this method, the scientists say they have identified Anatolia, an ancient region of western Asia which covers most of modern Turkey as the homeland of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken on every continent by a total of three billion people.
The study, published in the journal Science said there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family.
The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago, while an alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago.
The researchers used a complex technique which studies the evolution and spread of disease as well as basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses.
"We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago," the study said.
... contd.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/turkey-is-homeland-of-hindi-english-researchers/992550/
http://www.mpi.nl/news/distributionofIElanguages.jpg/image_preview
http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/indo-european-language-origin-map.jpg
And Supplementary material with lots ot other plots (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2012/08/22/337.6097.957.DC1/Bouckaert.SM.pdf) like this one:
http://uploadpic.org/storage/2011/gycZubLOGgOPAGKDfpjhsuA8O.jpg
Also:
Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say
Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family
in: Science 24 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6097 pp. 957-960
by: Remco Bouckaert, Philippe Lemey, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, Alexei J. Drummond, Russell D. Gray, Marc A. Suchard, Quentin D. Atkinson.
ABSTRACT
There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Excerpt:
"Linguists believe that the first speakers of the mother tongue, known as proto-Indo-European, were chariot-driving pastoralists who burst out of their homeland on the steppes above the Black Sea some 4,000 years ago and conquered Europe and Asia. A rival theory holds that, to the contrary, the first Indo-European speakers were peaceable farmers in Anatolia, now Turkey, some 9,000 years ago, who disseminated their language by the hoe, not the sword.
The new entrant to the debate is an evolutionary biologist, Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He and colleagues have taken the existing vocabulary and geographical range of 103 Indo-European languages and computationally walked them back in time and place to their statistically most likely origin.
The result, they announced in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, is that “we found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin.” Both the timing and the root of the tree of Indo-European languages “fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8,000 to 9,500 years ago,” they report.
... The calculation pointed to Anatolia, particularly a lozenge-shaped area in what is now southern Turkey, as the most plausible origin — a region that had also been proposed as the origin of Indo-European by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew, in 1987, because it was the source from which agriculture spread to Europe."
The Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
What do you think about this? Any shocks?