Language is one of the most fundamental and defining characteristics of human beings, and it shapes our minds, cultures, and societies. Among the many languages that exist today, the Indo-European language family is one of the most important and extensive. From Europe to parts of Asia, this language family includes English, Sanskrit, and many other languages spoken by billions of people.
Sanskrit, one of the many languages of the Indo-European language family
However, the origins of this language family have remained unknown for centuries, which has exacerbated the debates and conflicting theories between linguists and anthropologists. However, a landmark study, born from the collective efforts of an international team of linguists, has now revealed this ancient mystery, giving us a glimpse into the common ancestors of Indo-European languages, and the intricate threads that intertwine our linguistic heritage.
Dig into the roots of Indo-European languages
Over the past three centuries, evidence of the common origins of certain languages has grown, adding new content to the burgeoning field of linguistic anthropology. The new study, published in the journal Science, points to the roots of all Indo-European languages after extensively constructing "a new dataset of core vocabularies from 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 ancient or historical languages," through linguistic analysis. The common ancestor of English and Sanskrit may have been spoken 8100 years ago!
Russell Gray, co-author of the study, said, "Our chronology is robust in a variety of alternative phylogenetic models and sensitivity analyses. Thus, the combination of ancient DNA and linguistic phylogeny suggests that the key to solving the 200-year-old mystery of Indo-European languages lies in the mixing of the agrarian hypothesis and the steppe hypothesis.
This landmark study is the result of an international team of more than 80 linguists. It combines linguistic analysis, advanced computer technology, archaeology, and ancient DNA to successfully reconstruct the original Indo-European language, which represents the common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
Researchers from the Division of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology assembled this large team.
Where do these words come from?
According to Glottolog's database, there are currently around 400 Indo-European languages, though regional variants, dialects, and differences between languages can be somewhat subjective. It is worth noting that nearly half of the world's population speaks one of these languages.
These languages expanded over thousands of years, stretching from present-day Ireland in the west, to China in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to India in the south.
For decades, experts in the field have been divided into two camps on the question of the origins of Proto-Indo-European. According to the English edition of The National, one camp believes that about 9,000 years ago, people in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, including present-day Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, began to speak the original Indo-European language of their ancestors.
The region has witnessed the birth of agriculture and is significant. As farming methods expanded, the language of the early farmers also spread far and wide. This is known as the "Anatolian" or "farming" hypothesis.
On the other hand, another hypothesis holds that about 6000 to 4500 years ago, steppe populations migrated westward and eastward, roughly in and around the Baltic-Caspian steppe. A notable example is the Yamnaya people, who brought their language to Europe, forming Italian, Germanic, and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family.
This theory, known as the "steppe" hypothesis, proposes a different course for the expansion and diversification of Indo-European languages. According to New Scientist, this spread has also been attributed to the domestication of horses in Europe and Asia.
Schematic diagram of the hybrid hypothesis of the origin and spread of Indo-European languages
© (P. Heggarty et al. /Science)
The complexity of datasets and the hybrid origin hypothesis
This problem is further complicated by the conflicting conclusions of previous phylogenetic analyses of Indo-European languages. These differences are mainly due to the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the datasets used, as well as the limitations of using phylogenetic methods to analyze ancient languages. The results of the study are not entirely consistent with either hypothesis.
To determine the differentiation of each clade, including the ten existing clades, the research team took a unique approach. They performed dating of languages whose historical age was previously unknown. For example, to identify a point of reference, they dated Classical Latin to 50 BC. From this known date, they went backwards to determine the point of origin of the different branches.
The purpose of this approach is to unify all branches and to determine the age of the common ancestor of all the languages in the Indo-European language family. This approach allows researchers to gain insight into the timeline and historical development of these languages, revealing their ancient roots and subsequent evolution.
The project was led by lead author Paul Heggarty, who at the time was a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. Currently, Heggarty is a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, where he continues to work in the field of linguistics and language evolution.
Hegarty argues:
"The latest paleoDNA data suggest that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European languages did not come from the savannah, but from or near the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent further south—the earliest 8,100-year-old source of the Indo-European language family. Both the topology of our linglogenetic tree and the date of the division of our linglogenetic tree suggest that other early clades may have also spread directly from there, rather than through the steppe".
Instead, people realize that origins can be mixed. According to this hypothesis, the final homeland of the Indo-European language is located south of the Caucasus. Subsequently, some branches of the Indo-European language family migrated northward to the steppe, which became the second home of the Indo-European language family. These particular branches later entered Europe through expansion associated with the Yamnaya culture and the Jomon ware culture.
Summarizing the significance of the new study, Wolfgang Haak, group leader of the Division of Archaeological Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said: "In addition to more accurate temporal estimates of the entire linguistic tree, the topology and branching order of the linguistic tree are critical to align with key archaeological events and patterns of ancestral change in ancient human genome data." This is a huge step forward, moving from previously mutually exclusive schemes to a more plausible model that integrates archaeological, anthropological, and genetic findings.
Above: Sanskrit, one of the many languages of the Indo-European language family. Source: laurent dambies/Adobe Stock
Author: Sahir Pandey
Reference: A language tree with a sampled ancestor supports a hybrid model of Indo-European language origins. Science, 381 (6656)