Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.
Science. 2011 Apr 15;332(6027):346-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1199295.
Human genetic and phenotypic diversity declines with distance from Africa, as predicted by a serial founder effect in which successive population bottlenecks during range expansion progressively reduce diversity, underpinning support for an African origin of modern humans. Recent work suggests that a similar founder effect may operate on human culture and language. Here I show that the number of phonemes used in a global sample of 504 languages is also clinal and fits a serial founder-effect model of expansion from an inferred origin in Africa. This result, which is not explained by more recent demographic history, local language diversity, or statistical non-independence within language families, points to parallel mechanisms shaping genetic and linguistic diversity and supports an African origin of modern human languages.
人类遗传和表型多样性随与非洲的距离增加而减少，这与连续的奠基者效应一致，即在扩张过程中连续发生的种群瓶颈会逐渐减少多样性，这为现代人起源于非洲提供了支持。最近的研究表明，类似的奠基者效应可能也作用于人类文化和语言。在这里，我表明，在全球 504 种语言的样本中，使用的音素数量也是渐变的，并符合从非洲推断出的起源的连续奠基者效应模型。这一结果不能用更近的人口历史、当地语言多样性或语言家族内的统计非独立性来解释，它指向了塑造遗传和语言多样性的平行机制，并支持现代人类语言起源于非洲。
