Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Bouckaert R
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4112997 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family.
Bouckaert Remco R Lemey Philippe P Dunn Michael M Greenhill Simon J SJ Alekseyenko Alexander V AV Drummond Alexei J AJ Gray Russell D RD Suchard Marc A MA Atkinson Quentin D QD
Science (New York, N.Y.) 20120801 6097
There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test th ...[more]
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