Gray Russell D, Atkinson Quentin D
Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1020, New Zealand.
Nature. 2003 Nov 27;426(6965):435-9. doi: 10.1038/nature02029.
Languages, like genes, provide vital clues about human history. The origin of the Indo-European language family is "the most intensively studied, yet still most recalcitrant, problem of historical linguistics". Numerous genetic studies of Indo-European origins have also produced inconclusive results. Here we analyse linguistic data using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology. We test two theories of Indo-European origin: the 'Kurgan expansion' and the 'Anatolian farming' hypotheses. The Kurgan theory centres on possible archaeological evidence for an expansion into Europe and the Near East by Kurgan horsemen beginning in the sixth millennium BP. In contrast, the Anatolian theory claims that Indo-European languages expanded with the spread of agriculture from Anatolia around 8,000-9,500 years bp. In striking agreement with the Anatolian hypothesis, our analysis of a matrix of 87 languages with 2,449 lexical items produced an estimated age range for the initial Indo-European divergence of between 7,800 and 9,800 years bp. These results were robust to changes in coding procedures, calibration points, rooting of the trees and priors in the bayesian analysis.
语言如同基因一样，为人类历史提供了至关重要的线索。印欧语系的起源是“历史语言学中研究最为深入但仍最难解决的问题”。众多关于印欧语起源的基因研究也得出了不确定的结果。在此，我们运用源自进化生物学的计算方法来分析语言数据。我们检验了两种关于印欧语起源的理论：“库尔干扩张”假说和“安纳托利亚农耕”假说。库尔干理论的核心是公元前6000年开始库尔干骑兵向欧洲和近东扩张的可能考古证据。相比之下，安纳托利亚理论则认为印欧语随着约8000至9500年前农业从安纳托利亚的传播而扩张。与安纳托利亚假说惊人地一致，我们对包含2449个词汇项的87种语言矩阵的分析得出，原始印欧语分化的估计时间范围在公元前7800年至9800年之间。这些结果对于编码程序、校准点、树的根以及贝叶斯分析中的先验假设的变化具有稳健性。
