Bertorelle G, Bertranpetit J, Calafell F, Nasidze I S, Barbujani G
Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Padova, Italia.
Eur J Hum Genet. 1995;3(4):256-63. doi: 10.1159/000472306.
Genetic evidence is consistent with the view that the Indo-European languages were propagated in Europe by the diffusion of early farmers. The existence of phylogenetic relationships between European populations speaking other languages has been proposed on linguistic and archaeological grounds, and is here tested by analyzing allele frequencies at ten polymorphic protein and blood group loci. Genetic distances between speakers of Basque and Caucasian languages are compared with those between controls, i.e. contiguous populations speaking Indo-European and Altaic. Although some statistical tests show an excess of genetic similarity between Basque and South Caucasian speakers, most results do not support their common origin. If the Basques and the Caucasian-speaking populations share common ancestors, recent evolutionary phenomena must have caused divergence between them, so that their gene frequencies do not appear more similar now than those of random pairs of populations separated by the same geographic distance.
印欧语系语言是由早期农民的扩散而在欧洲传播开来的。基于语言学和考古学依据，有人提出说其他语言的欧洲人群之间存在系统发育关系，本文通过分析十个多态蛋白质和血型位点的等位基因频率对此进行了验证。将巴斯克语和高加索语使用者之间的遗传距离与对照组（即说印欧语系和阿尔泰语系的相邻人群）的遗传距离进行了比较。尽管一些统计测试表明巴斯克语使用者和南高加索语使用者之间存在过多的遗传相似性，但大多数结果并不支持他们有共同起源这一观点。如果巴斯克人和说高加索语的人群有共同祖先，那么近期的进化现象必定导致了他们之间的分化，以至于他们现在的基因频率并不比由相同地理距离分隔的随机人群对的基因频率显得更相似。
