Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T08:23:35.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prehistory by Bayesian phylogenetics? The state of the art on Indo-European origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul Heggarty
Paul Heggarty*
Affiliation:
*Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bayesian analysis has come to be widely used in archaeological chronologies and has been a regular feature of recent articles in Antiquity. Its application to linguistic prehistory, however, has proved controversial, in particular on the issue of Indo-European origins. Dating and mapping language distributions back into prehistory has an inevitable fascination, but has remained fraught with difficulty. This review of recent studies highlights the potential of increasingly sophisticated Bayesian phylogenetic models, while also identifying areas of concern, and ways in which the models might be refined to address them. Notwithstanding these remaining limitations, in the Indo-European case the results from Bayesian phylogenetics continue to reinforce the argument for an Anatolian rather than a Steppe origin.

Keywords

Indo-Europeanlanguage prehistoryBayesian analysisphylogeneticsfarming/sol/language dispersals
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 340 , 01 June 2014 , pp. 566 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, D. W. 2007. The horse, the wheel, and language: how Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian Steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Atkinson, Q.D., Nicholls, G., Welch, D. &Gray., R.D. 2005. From words to dates: water into wine, mathemagic or phylogenetic inference? Transactions of the Philological Society 103: 193–219. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2005.00151.x Google Scholar
Bouckaert, R., Lemey, P., Dunn, M., Greenhill, S.J., Alekseyenko, A.V., Drummond, A.J., Gray, R.D., Suchard, M.A. &Atkinson., Q.D. 2012. Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science 337: 957–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1219669 Google Scholar
Bouckaert, R., Lemey, P., Dunn, M., Greenhill, S.J., Alekseyenko, A.V., Drummond, A.J., Gray, R.D., Suchard, M.A. &Atkinson., Q.D. 2013. Correction to: Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science 342: 1446. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6165.1446-a Google Scholar
Campbell, L. &Poser., W.J. 2008. Language classification: history and method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clackson, J. 2007. Indo-European linguistics: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, R. 1988. [Review of Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins by C. Renfrew]. Current Anthropology 29: 449–53.Google Scholar
Currie, T.E., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R.D., Hasegawa, T. & Mace, R.. 2010. Rise and fall of political complexity in island South-east Asia and the Pacific. Nature 467: 801–804. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09461 Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1970. Proto-Indo-European culture: the Kurgan culture during the 5th to the 3rd millennia B. C., in Cardona, G., Koenigswald, H. M. & Senn, A. (ed.) Indo-European and Indo-Europeans: 155–98. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gray, R.D. &Atkinson., Q.D. 2003. Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature 426: 435–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature02029 Google Scholar
Gray, R. D., Drummond, A. J. &Greenhill., S.J. 2009. Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science 323: 479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1166858 Google Scholar
Heggarty, P. 2006. Interdisciplinary indiscipline? Can phylogenetic methods meaningfully be applied to language data—and to dating language?, in Forster, P. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages: 183–94. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Heggarty, P. 2010. Beyond lexicostatistics: how to get more out of ‘word list’ comparisons. Diachronica 27(2): 301–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/dia.27.2.07heg Google Scholar
Heggarty, P. & Renfrew, C.. 2014. Introduction: languages, in Renfrew, C. & Bahn, P. (ed.) The Cambridge world prehistory: 19–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heggarty, P., Maguire, W. & Mcmahon, A.M.S.. 2010. Splits or waves? Trees or webs? How divergence measures and network analysis can unravel language histories. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365: 3829–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0099 Google Scholar
Holden, C. J. &Gray., R.D. 2006. Rapid radiation, borrowing and dialect continua in the Bantu languages, in Forster, P. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages: 19–31. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Kitchen, A., Ehret, C., Assefa, S. &Mulligan., C.J. 2009. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276: 2703–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.0408 Google Scholar
Krell, K. S. 1998. Gimbutas’ Kurgan-PIE homeland hypothesis: a linguistic critique, in Blench, R. & Spriggs, M. (ed.) Archaeology and language II: archaeological data and linguistic hypotheses: 267–82. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lee, S. & Hasegawa, T.. 2011. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278: 3662–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.0518 Google Scholar
Mallory, J. P. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Mallory, J. P. 2013. Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands. Journal of Language Relationship 9: 145–54.Google Scholar
Pagel, M. & Meade, A.. 2006. Estimating rates of lexical replacement on phylogenetic trees of languages, in Forster, P. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages: 173–82. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. & Bahn, P. (ed.). 2014. The Cambridge world prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ringe, D.A., Warnow, T. & Taylor, A.. 2002. Indo-European and computational cladistics. Transactions of the Philological Society 100: 59–129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.00091 Google Scholar
Sims-Williams, P. 1998. Genetics, linguistics and prehistory: thinking big and thinking straight. Antiquity 72: 505–27.Google Scholar