Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages

Author:

Heggarty Paul123ORCID,Anderson Cormac3ORCID,Scarborough Matthew34,King Benedict3ORCID,Bouckaert Remco5ORCID,Jocz Lechosław6ORCID,Kümmel Martin Joachim7ORCID,Jügel Thomas8ORCID,Irslinger Britta9ORCID,Pooth Roland10,Liljegren Henrik11ORCID,Strand Richard F.12ORCID,Haig Geoffrey13ORCID,Macák Martin14,Kim Ronald I.15ORCID,Anonby Erik1617ORCID,Pronk Tijmen17,Belyaev Oleg1819ORCID,Dewey-Findell Tonya Kim20,Boutilier Matthew21,Freiberg Cassandra22ORCID,Tegethoff Robert37,Serangeli Matilde7ORCID,Liosis Nikos23ORCID,Stroński Krzysztof24ORCID,Schulte Kim25ORCID,Gupta Ganesh Kumar24ORCID,Haak Wolfgang26ORCID,Krause Johannes26ORCID,Atkinson Quentin D.2728ORCID,Greenhill Simon J.329ORCID,Kühnert Denise30ORCID,Gray Russell D.327ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Departamento de Humanidades, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 15088 Lima, Peru.

2. Waves Group, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.

3. Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.

4. Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, S 2300 København, Denmark.

5. Centre for Computational Evolution, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.

6. Faculty of Humanities, Jacob of Paradies University, 66-400 Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland.

7. Seminar for Indo-European Studies, Institut für Orientalistik, Indogermanistik, Ur- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany.

8. Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr University Bochum, 44789 Bochum, Germany.

9. Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 04107 Leipzig, Germany.

10. Department of Linguistics, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.

11. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.

12. Independent scholar, Cottonwood, AZ 86326, USA.

13. Department of General Linguistics, University of Bamberg, 96047 Bamberg, Germany.

14. Independent scholar, 949 74 Nitra, Slovakia.

15. Department of Older Germanic Languages, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, 60-780 Poznań, Poland.

16. School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada.

17. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands.

18. Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 GSP-1 Moscow, Russia.

19. Department of Iranian Languages, Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow 125009, Russia.

20. Centre for the Study of the Viking Age, School of English, University of Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.

21. Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.

22. Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany.

23. Institute of Modern Greek Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.

24. Faculty of Modern Languages, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, 61-874 Poznań, Poland.

25. Department of Translation and Communication, Jaume I University, 12006 Castelló de la Plana, Spain.

26. Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.

27. School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.

28. Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK.

29. ARC Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia.

30. Transmission, Infection, Diversification and Evolution Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, 07745 Jena, Germany.

Abstract

The origins of the Indo-European language family are hotly disputed. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of core vocabulary have produced conflicting results, with some supporting a farming expansion out of Anatolia ~9000 years before present (yr B.P.), while others support a spread with horse-based pastoralism out of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe ~6000 yr B.P. Here we present an extensive database of Indo-European core vocabulary that eliminates past inconsistencies in cognate coding. Ancestry-enabled phylogenetic analysis of this dataset indicates that few ancient languages are direct ancestors of modern clades and produces a root age of ~8120 yr B.P. for the family. Although this date is not consistent with the Steppe hypothesis, it does not rule out an initial homeland south of the Caucasus, with a subsequent branch northward onto the steppe and then across Europe. We reconcile this hybrid hypothesis with recently published ancient DNA evidence from the steppe and the northern Fertile Crescent. 

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference168 articles.

1. D. M. Eberhard G. F. Simons C. D. Fennig Eds. Ethnologue: Languages of the World (SIL International ed. 25 2022).

2. H. Hammarström R. Forkel M. Haspelmath S. Bank Glottolog 4.7 (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 2022); https://glottolog.org/.

3. Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions

4. L. Campbell W. J. Poser Language Classification: History and Method (Cambridge Univ. Press 2008).

5. The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives

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