Matsumae Hiromi, Ranacher Peter, Savage Patrick E, Blasi Damián E, Currie Thomas E, Koganebuchi Kae, Nishida Nao, Sato Takehiro, Tanabe Hideyuki, Tajima Atsushi, Brown Steven, Stoneking Mark, Shimizu Kentaro K, Oota Hiroki, Bickel Balthasar
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, 641-12 Maioka-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 244-0813, Japan.
Sci Adv. 2021 Aug 18;7(34). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9223. Print 2021 Jul.
Culture evolves in ways that are analogous to, but distinct from, genomes. Previous studies examined similarities between cultural variation and genetic variation (population history) at small scales within language families, but few studies have empirically investigated these parallels across language families using diverse cultural data. We report an analysis comparing culture and genomes from in and around northeast Asia spanning 11 language families. We extract and summarize the variation in language (grammar, phonology, lexicon), music (song structure, performance style), and genomes (genome-wide SNPs) and test for correlations. We find that grammatical structure correlates with population history (genetic history). Recent contact and shared descent fail to explain the signal, suggesting relationships that arose before the formation of current families. Our results suggest that grammar might be a cultural indicator of population history while also demonstrating differences among cultural and genetic relationships that highlight the complex nature of human history.
文化的演变方式与基因组类似，但又有所不同。以往的研究在语系内部的小尺度上考察了文化变异与遗传变异（群体历史）之间的相似性，但很少有研究使用多样的文化数据，从经验上对跨语系的这些相似性进行调查。我们报告了一项对来自东北亚及其周边地区、涵盖11个语系的文化和基因组进行比较的分析。我们提取并总结了语言（语法、音系、词汇）、音乐（歌曲结构、表演风格）和基因组（全基因组单核苷酸多态性）中的变异，并测试它们之间的相关性。我们发现语法结构与群体历史（遗传历史）相关。近期的接触和共同祖先并不能解释这一信号，这表明这些关系在当前语系形成之前就已出现。我们的结果表明，语法可能是群体历史的一种文化指标，同时也显示了文化关系和遗传关系之间的差异，突出了人类历史的复杂性。
