Language-tree Divergence Times Support the Anatolian Theory of Indo-European Origin

Language-tree Divergence Times Support the Anatolian Theory of Indo-European Origin PDF Author: Gray, Russell D.
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 5

Get Book Here

Book Description

Language-tree Divergence Times Support the Anatolian Theory of Indo-European Origin

Language-tree Divergence Times Support the Anatolian Theory of Indo-European Origin PDF Author: Gray, Russell D.
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 5

Get Book Here

Book Description


Tracing the Indo-Europeans

Tracing the Indo-Europeans PDF Author: Birgit Anette Olsen
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789252717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

The Indo-European Language Family

The Indo-European Language Family PDF Author: Thomas Olander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108499791
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book has grown out of a workshop held in Copenhagen in February 2017, The Indo-European Family Tree.

The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited

The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited PDF Author: Kristian Kristiansen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009261746
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Indo-European dispersal inalterably shaped the Eurasian linguistic landscape. This book offers the newest insights into this dramatic prehistoric event.

Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity

Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity PDF Author: Søren Wichmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027202656
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
Quantitative methods in linguistics, which the protean American structuralist linguist Morris Swadesh introduced in the 1950s, have become increasingly popular and have opened the world of languages to interdisciplinary approaches. The papers collected here are the work not only of descriptive and historical linguists, but also statisticians, physicists and computer scientists. They demonstrate the application of quantitative methods to the elucidation of linguistic prehistory on an unprecedented world-wide scale, providing cutting-edge insights into issues of the linguistic correlates of subsistence strategies, rates of birth and extinction of languages, lexical borrowability, the identification of language family homelands, the assessment of genealogical relationships, and the development of new phylogenetic methods appropriate for linguistic data. Originally published in Diachronica 27:2 (2010).

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind PDF Author: Mark Pagel
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393065871
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe PDF Author: Chris Fowler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191666890
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1303

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Neolithic --a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe--has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic --from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta --offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first appearance of farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.

Deep History

Deep History PDF Author: Andrew Shryock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520270282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
This breakthrough book brings science into history to offer a dazzling new vision of humanity across time. Team-written by leading experts in a variety of fields, it maps events, cultures, and eras across millions of years to present a new scale for understanding the human body, energy and ecosystems, language, food, kinship, migration, and more.

The Evolution of Cultural Diversity

The Evolution of Cultural Diversity PDF Author: Ruth Mace
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315418606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
Virtually all aspects of human behavior show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organization and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct. Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. There are also a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural evolution is not tree-like: cultural inheritance is not Mendelian and can indeed be vertical, horizontal or oblique, evidence of borrowing abounds, cultures are not necessarily biological populations and can be transient and complex. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. A range of powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology is used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution. Evidence is amassed from archaeological, linguist and cultural datasets, from both recent and historical or pre-historical time periods. A unifying theme is that the phylogenetic approach is a useful and powerful framework, both for describing the evolutionary history of these traits, and also for testing adaptive hypotheses about their evolution and co-evolution. Contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and linguists, and this book will be of great interest to all those involved in these areas.

Genes, Language, & Culture History in the Southwest Pacific

Genes, Language, & Culture History in the Southwest Pacific PDF Author: Jonathan S. Friedlaender
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190293675
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Get Book Here

Book Description
The broad arc of islands north of Australia that extends from Indonesia east towards the central Pacific is home to a set of human populations whose concentration of diversity is unequaled elsewhere. Approximately 20% of the worlds languages are spoken here, and the biological and genetic heterogeneity among the groups is extraordinary. Anthropologist W.W. Howells once declared diversity in the region so Protean as to defy analysis. However, this book can now claim considerable success in describing and understanding the origins of the genetic and linguistic variation there. In order to cut through this biological knot, the authors have applied a comprehensive battery of genetic analyses to an intensively sampled set of populations, and have subjected these and complementary linguistic data to a variety of phylogenetic analyses. This has revealed a number of heretofore unknown ancient Pleistocene genetic variants that are only found in these island populations, and has also identified the genetic footprints of more recent migrants from Southeast Asia who were the ancestors of the Polynesians. The book lays out the very complex structure of the variation within and among the islands in this relatively small region, and a number of explanatory models are tested to see which best account for the observed pattern of genetic variation here. The results suggest that a number of commonly used models of evolutionary divergence are overly simple in their assumptions, and that often human diversity has accumulated in very complex ways.