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Tracking the origin of Transeurasian languages

A triangulation of linguistic, archaeological and genetic data suggests that the Transeurasian language family originated in a population of grain farmers in China around 9,000 years ago, and that agriculture underpinned its spread.
  1. Peter Bellwood

    1. Peter Bellwood is at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.

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The Transeurasian language family is one of the most widely distributed language families of the modern world, and one school of thought says that it encompasses the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic language groups (Tungusic languages are spoken in northeastern China and Siberia). Writing in Nature, Robbeets et al.1 present their use of an innovative approach to resolve the long-standing debate about the origins and spread of this language family.

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Nature 599, 557-558 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03037-w

References

  1. Robbeets, M. et al. Nature 599, 616–621 (2021).

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  2. Nelson, S., Zhushchikhovskaya, I., Li, T., Hudson, M. & Robbeets, M. Evol. Hum. Sci. 2, e5 (2020).

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  3. Wang, J. et al. Archaeol. Anthropol. Sci. 13, 156 (2021).

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  4. Wang, C.-C. et al. Nature 591, 413–419 (2021).

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  5. Bellwood, P. Science 361, 31–32 (2018).

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  6. Bellwood, P. First Farmers (Blackwell, 2005).

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  7. Bellwood, P. & Renfrew, C. (eds) Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (McDonald Inst., 2002).

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  8. Bellwood, P. Evol. Hum. Sci. 2, e37 (2020).

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  9. Zhang, M., Yan, S., Pan, W. & Jin, L. Nature 569, 112–115 (2019).

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  10. Honeychurch, W. et al. Archaeol. Res. Asia 26, 100264 (2021).

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  11. Vovin, A. in The Global Prehistory of Human Migration (ed. Bellwood, P.) 197–203 (Wiley, 2015).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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