Indo-European languages appear to have originated around 7,800 to 9,800 years ago in Turkey.
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By Alyssa Joyce of Nature magazine
Languages as diverse as English, Russian and Hindi can trace their roots back more than 8,000 years to Anatolia — now in modern-day Turkey. That's the conclusion of a study that assessed 103 ancient and contemporary languages using a technique normally used to study the evolution and spread of disease. The researchers hope that their findings can settle a long-running debate about the origins of the Indo-European language group.
English, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Greek and Hindi might all sound very different, but there are many commonalities, such as the Dutch moeder, Spanish madre and Russian mat', all of which mean "mother". On this basis, researchers have concluded that more than a hundred languages across Europe and the Middle East, from Iceland to Sri Lanka, stem from a common ancestor.
Some scholars think that Indo-European languages spread with farming techniques from Turkey across Europe and Asia 8,000–9,500 years ago. Others suggest that nomadic ‘Kurgan’ horsemen brought the origins of Indo-European language from central Asia about 6,000 years ago. There is archaeological evidence to support both theories, but genetic studies of Indo-Europeans have been inconclusive, leading to an intractable debate among linguists, anthropologists and cultural historians.
Taking sides
In 2003, Russell Gray and his then doctoral student, Quentin Atkinson, at the University of Auckland in New Zealand generated a maelstrom of controversy by claiming to have solved, by computer modeling, what has been described as “the most intensively studied, yet still the most recalcitrant, problem of historical linguistics”, coming down on the side of Anatolia4 (see 'Language tree rooted in Turkey').
Neither Gray nor Atkinson is a linguist. But they believed they could work with the kinds of tools employed in evolutionary ecology to answer important questions about language prehistory.
Genes and words have several similarities, and language evolution has conventionally been mapped using a "family tree" format. Gray and Atkinson theorized that the evolution of words was similar to the evolution of species, and that the ‘cognate’ of words — how closely their sounds and meanings are related to one another — could be modeled like DNA sequences and used to measure how languages evolved. By extension, the rate at which words changed — or mutated — could be used to determine the age at which Indo-European languages diverged from one another.
Using methods from evolutionary biology, the duo compared common words in 87 Indo-European languages, such as 'mother', 'hunt' and 'sky', to figure out how language ‘species’ were related to one another. They traced the origins of Indo-European languages to 7,800–9,800 years ago, supporting the Anatolian hypothesis.
Critics were skeptical. Gray and Atkinson had determined when the languages originated, but not where. So, in a paper published today in Science, Atkinson, Gray and their colleagues address this using the type of geography-based computer modeling normally used by epidemiologists to track the spread of disease1.
The locations of current Indo-European languages are well known, and the geographic origin of older, extinct languages — such as Ancient Greek or Sanskrit — can be inferred from the historical record. In this way, the researchers believed they could track the movement of the Indo-European languages in the same way that epidemiological models trace a disease outbreak to its source. Once again, they conclude that the origin is Anatolia.
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Add CommentTurks have migrated in different streams form the central Asia to Anatolia starting from the 9th century. Let's not forget that the biggest impact for the Byzantium empire maybe was the Latin Kingdom formed during the cruisades in Constantinopolis, and also Armenians were allies of Turkish tribes in several wars against Byzantium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@BruceSinclair
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI should mention there is a bit of bad blood between some Greek (Indo-European) and Turkish (Turkic) nationalists. Vitriolic comments from both sides litter the comments of even simple folk music on YouTube. Democrat and Republican extremists look like best buds by comparison... You don't want to step in that.
@billsmith Actually, I agree with you, but facts are facts. Anyways, as Martin Luther Kins said: “We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thischoosing the mother example seems silly
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin every human language mother starts with mmm
it's the first sound a child makes linking food with a person
p
The proposal of Anatolia as the source of the Indo-European language family makes us take another look at what was going on there in 8,000BCE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe see Çatalhöyük as the primary excavated town, and this shows us an economy that made obsidian blades for export, and so is likely to have incorporated an extensive trading network.
Trading as a method of spreading language is more persuasive than warrior horsemen.
The surprise to the model is the lack of this same Indo-European language in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt that were also beneficiary to the Obsidian trade.
So, we have an obvious question. Did the Kurgan warrior horsemen also act as the northern branch of the Çatalhöyük obsidian trade?
There appears to be no indisputable evidence of the exact origin of the language. Archaeology, linguistics and genetics all provide pieces to a puzzle that may never be completed, because some of the pieces have been lost to time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday's Turks are original Anatolian people who in the history have talked various ancient languages (Hittite, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian and -many other). Then later they adopted the language of whoever took over Anatolia like Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Armenians, Turks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen Turks came to Anatolia, they were a minority. But also a minority with ruling power. Hence they have blended into the Anatolian culture and made their language dominant.
If the origin of todays Turks are central Asia, how come they do not look lile Chinese or Mongolians?
You might say Turks have wiped off earlier languages and culture. But so did the Greeks and Armenians when they came to Anatolia for the cultures which were there before them.
Today's Turks are original Anatolian people who in the history have talked various ancient languages (Hittite, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian and -many other). Then later they adopted the language of whoever took over Anatolia like Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Armenians, Turks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen Turks came to Anatolia, they were a minority. But also a minority with ruling power. Hence they have blended into the Anatolian culture and made their language dominant.
If the origin of todays Turks are central Asia, how come they do not look lile Chinese or Mongolians?
You might say Turks have wiped off earlier languages and culture. But so did the Greeks and Armenians when they came to Anatolia for the cultures which were there before them.
I wonder how the newly discovered ruins at Göbekli Tepe, estimated at 11,500 years old, will figure into this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/18/history-in-the-remaking.html
The Hittites as a people are repeatedly cited in the Bible from "Jerusalem: your father was an Amorite, and your mother an Hittite", to "You can't hide a town placed in the heights". The town in the heights was Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite empire that faded during a civil war, the inhabitants of Hattusa burned their temples, palaces and homes, and run away, and part of their culture can be summarized in three things they taught their children: horseback riding, being austere, and always telling the truth. The place of this town that had no natural resources and received everything from the territories they ruled is located in what the Turkish of today call Bogazkale. The study of kitchen recipes may also a way to ascertain the origin of the populations, or at least of their culture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf man's origin is in Africa, what caused the branching of original language?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is worth to note that Vedas from India are passed down as oral tradition and the prayers and rituals are kept intact for thousands of years. The basic words seem to have connections to Sanskit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd all this time I was under the impression that the Grimm Brothers using comparative linguistics and others using linear B along with various ancient literatures had come to that conclusion. They assumed Indo=European arose in central Turkey long before the ancestors of modern Turks migrated into Turkey.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf one follows Grimm's Law of Consonantal Change it is also possible to assume that it arose from a language similar to Semitic due to certain similarities between it and the Akkadian type of Semitic Languages.
The excavations at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey reveal the first neolithic monolithic henge; constructed 12,000 years ago, it's the oldest known man-made religious structure. It's size meant considerable knowledge of agricultural technology as a large number of artisans would have been required and the world's Einkorn wheat genetically derives from that area and all the world's domesticated cats are genetically identical to it's local wildcat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe excavations at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey reveal the first neolithic monolithic henge; constructed 12,000 years ago, it's the oldest known man-made religious structure. It's size meant considerable knowledge of agricultural technology as a large number of artisans would have been required and the world's Einkorn wheat genetically derives from that area and all the world's domesticated cats are genetically identical to it's local wildcat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBulgarian language was created and in use to prevent Hellenization of the inhabitants in the current territories of Bulgaria(Tracians,Slavs and others)almost seven centuries before the advance of the Ottomans in South Eastern Europe,therefore Turks could have not contributed to the diversification of the Indo-European languages part of which is Bulgarian.Tukish colonization of Asia Minor occurred in period during which Bulgarian language was in use for quite some time and IT IS NOT AN DERIVATIVE of Turkish(it did indeed borrowed significant semantic units from Turkish during the Yoke).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not think the comparison between 1) change in language and 2) evolution of species is valid beyond a very limited and general kind of resemblance, if even that applies. The Reading Univ authors appear to have counted word frequencies in written language which is always more conservative than the living spoken language around us. Human language use is whimsical (not random) in that it varies based on immeasurable determinants in the speakers mind. Single nucleotide mispairings that drive speciation are random. The author are also tested at least two hypotheses in this endeavor: whether this model, borrowed from evolutionary biology, accurately models linguistic change AND whether Indo European languages originated in Anatolia. The addition of Kurgan horsemen is confusing, if not likely confounding, but it is a third hypothesis. The notion that frequency controls stability of any grammatical pattern or lexical element, as attributed to one expert, seems to be conterfactual. The geographical spread of a spoken language (more speakers, more utterances of the common forms) results in dialectalization of the original tongue (e.g. English, Chinese, or even Italian). I am not swayed by this 'evidence'; the methods are not yet proven to apply to this field of study, the foundational assumptions are dubious & facile and the interpretations overwrought (wait, wait, I think I mean ‘overworked’).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you are referring to very recent events in the history of Asia Minor. The debate over the geographic location of the origin of Indo-European languages refers to ancient times between 20,000 to 5,000 years ago when the inhabitants of Anatolia were anatolians (Hittites Lydians etc) and did almost certainly speak variants of the Indo-European language tree. The invasion and dominance of turkic people and language came much later than the events referred to in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that creating a model by which various accents of a given word (e.g. mother) within a certain language or through different languages can be mathematically defined and classified would be helpful to rectify the current research done by Dr.Atkinson.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor instance, one could depict various sound curves of the word 'mother' in English, German, French and Persian
, trying to find correlations between those curves. This is something I have long had in my mind to quantify the rather non-quantified world of language and linguistics!
I wish they'd publish these maps somewhere...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-E
For instance, okaasan or okan in Japanese starts with an mmm. Or inay in Tagalog starts with an mmm. The reason you think that every human language's word for mother starts with an m is because so many related languages start with an m. And it's not just an m, it's an m, t, and r. Mother, mater, madre, mere. Same with brother, frater, father, pater, padre, etc. (see Grimm's law for an explanation of why P becomes F). Raja, Rex, Rich, Reich. Mother is as useful an example as any of those, moreso, because words considered to be more basic, more commonly used, such as those describing bodily nouns, close family relationships, agriculture, hunting, etc, are more likely to be shared by a language family. Words relating to abstract notions developed in philosophy, for instance, are not. So foot, ped, tooth, tont, zahn etc. Related.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely correct. When an invading force conquers and replaces the ruling aristocracy of a given location, the language might change, but the people aren't replaced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLots of people believe that when one group invades, they exterminate the local population and replace them, but you have correctly pointed out that languages and culture transmit, but only a small minority of people come to dominate. Genetic research in the British isles show that people's genetic markers are still predominantly British celt, not anglo, saxon, dane, frank, etc. I mean, there's a mix, for sure, but the original population remains the best represented.
Anyhow, good point. Genetic tests in Lebanon comparing the local population to DNA recovered from Canaanite remains showed that the local population is directly descended from the Canaanites. most people think the Lebanese are "Arabs", but only a tiny Arab minority spread Islam and the Arabic language around a vast area. Outside of Saudi Arabia, there are virtually no "Arabs", just Arabic speakers.
This phenomenon is often misunderstood, connecting the language to the ethnicity.
Again, I'm glad someone pointed it out.
Isolation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have an issue with this theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirstly "ThePeakOilPoet" makes an unfounded claim in this comment section, where he says "choosing the mother example seems silly - in every human language mother starts with mmm".
This is not correct. In Albanian, the word for mother is 'nene'.
But most interestingly, the word for mother in Hittite is 'annas'. So, these 'experts' used the word for mother to trace the source of Indo-European to Anatolia, yet the version of Indo-European which remained in Anatolia did not even use this word.