Farmers spread Transeurasian languages

Date:
November 29, 2021
Source:
University of Auckland
Summary:
New research provides interdisciplinary support for the 'Farming
Hypothesis' of language dispersal, tracing Transeurasian languages
back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia beginning
in the Early Neolithic -- roughly between 8-10 thousand years ago.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The origin and early dispersal of Transeurasian languages, including,
among others, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic, is
among the most disputed issues of Asian prehistory. Although many
of the commonalities between these languages are due to borrowing,
recent studies have shown evidence supporting the classification of Transeurasian as a genealogical group, or a group of languages that
emerged from a common ancestor.


==========================================================================
A new paper published in the journal Nature by an international team
that includes researchers from the University of Auckland provides interdisciplinary support for the "Farming Hypothesis" of language
dispersal, tracing Transeurasian languages back to the first farmers
moving across Northeast Asia beginning in the Early Neolithic -- roughly between 8-10 thousand years ago.

Using newly sequenced genomes, an extensive archaeological database, and
a new dataset of vocabulary concepts for 98 languages, the researchers triangulate the time-depth, location and dispersal routes of ancestral Transeurasian speech communities.

The evidence from linguistic, archeological and genetic sources indicates
that the origins of the Transeurasian languages can be traced back to
the beginning of millet cultivation and the early Amur gene pool in the
region of the West Liao River.

During the Late Neolithic, millet farmers with Amur-related genes spread
into contiguous regions across Northeast Asia. In the millennia that
followed, speakers of the daughter branches of Proto-Transeurasian admixed
with Yellow River, western Eurasian and Jomon populations, adding rice agriculture, western Eurasian crops and pastoralist lifeways to the Transeurasian package.

The linguistic evidence used to triangulate came from a new dataset of
more than 3,000 cognate sets representing over 250 concepts in nearly 100 Transeurasian languages. From this, researchers were able to construct
a phylogenetic tree which shows the roots of the Proto-Transeurasian
family reaching back over 9,000 years before the present to millet
farmers living in the region of the West Liao River.

The new study also reports the first collection of ancient genomes from
Korea, the Ryukyu Islands and early cereal farmers in Japan. Combining
their results with previously published genomes from East Asia, the
team identified a common genetic component called "Amur-like ancestry"
among all speakers of Transeurasian languages.

They were also able to confirm that the Bronze Age Yayoi period in
Japan saw a massive migration from the continent at the same time
as the arrival of farming. Taken together, the study's results show
that, although masked by millennia of extensive cultural interaction, Transeurasian languages share a common ancestry and that the early spread
of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture.

University of Auckland author on the paper, Dr Remco Bouckaert from the
School of Computer Science says the tools, or phylogenetic methods, used
in the study were largely developed by a team at the University. "I've
been working on cultural evolution for a decade and am really pleased
to see these quantitative techniques increasingly adapted and applied
to research in the life sciences." The researchers say more ancient
DNA, more etymological research and more archaeobotanical research will
further deepen understanding of human migrations in Neolithic Northeast
Asia and untangle the influence of later population movements, of which
many were pastoralist in nature.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Auckland. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Martine Robbeets, Remco Bouckaert, Matthew Conte, Alexander
Savelyev, Tao
Li, Deog-Im An, Ken-ichi Shinoda, Yinqiu Cui, Takamune Kawashima,
Geonyoung Kim, Junzo Uchiyama, Joanna Dolińska, Sofia
Oskolskaya, Ken-Yōjiro Yamano, Noriko Seguchi, Hirotaka Tomita,
Hiroto Takamiya, Hideaki Kanzawa-Kiriyama, Hiroki Oota, Hajime
Ishida, Ryosuke Kimura, Takehiro Sato, Jae-Hyun Kim, Bingcong
Deng, Rasmus Bjo/rn, Seongha Rhee, Kyou-Dong Ahn, Ilya Gruntov,
Olga Mazo, John R. Bentley, Ricardo Fernandes, Patrick Roberts,
Ilona R. Bausch, Linda Gilaizeau, Minoru Yoneda, Mitsugu Kugai,
Raffaela A. Bianco, Fan Zhang, Marie Himmel, Mark J. Hudson,
Chao Ning. Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the
Transeurasian languages. Nature, 2021; 599 (7886): 616 DOI:
10.1038/ s41586-021-04108-8 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211129122713.htm

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