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Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype
Languages and genes arguably follow parallel evolutionary trajectories, descending from a common source and subsequently differentiating. However, although common ancestry is established within language families, it remains controversial whether language preserves a deep historical signal. To addres...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5105118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27833101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36645 |
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author | Reyes-Centeno, Hugo Harvati, Katerina Jäger, Gerhard |
author_facet | Reyes-Centeno, Hugo Harvati, Katerina Jäger, Gerhard |
author_sort | Reyes-Centeno, Hugo |
collection | PubMed |
description | Languages and genes arguably follow parallel evolutionary trajectories, descending from a common source and subsequently differentiating. However, although common ancestry is established within language families, it remains controversial whether language preserves a deep historical signal. To address this question, we evaluate the association between linguistic and geographic distances across 265 language families, as well as between linguistic, geographic, and cranial distances among eleven populations from Africa, Asia, and Australia. We take advantage of differential population history signals reflected by human cranial anatomy, where temporal bone shape reliably tracks deep population history and neutral genetic changes, while facial shape is more strongly associated with recent environmental effects. We show that linguistic distances are strongly geographically patterned, even within widely dispersed groups. However, they are correlated predominantly with facial, rather than temporal bone, morphology, suggesting that variation in vocabulary likely tracks relatively recent events and possibly population contact. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5105118 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-51051182016-11-17 Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype Reyes-Centeno, Hugo Harvati, Katerina Jäger, Gerhard Sci Rep Article Languages and genes arguably follow parallel evolutionary trajectories, descending from a common source and subsequently differentiating. However, although common ancestry is established within language families, it remains controversial whether language preserves a deep historical signal. To address this question, we evaluate the association between linguistic and geographic distances across 265 language families, as well as between linguistic, geographic, and cranial distances among eleven populations from Africa, Asia, and Australia. We take advantage of differential population history signals reflected by human cranial anatomy, where temporal bone shape reliably tracks deep population history and neutral genetic changes, while facial shape is more strongly associated with recent environmental effects. We show that linguistic distances are strongly geographically patterned, even within widely dispersed groups. However, they are correlated predominantly with facial, rather than temporal bone, morphology, suggesting that variation in vocabulary likely tracks relatively recent events and possibly population contact. Nature Publishing Group 2016-11-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5105118/ /pubmed/27833101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36645 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Reyes-Centeno, Hugo Harvati, Katerina Jäger, Gerhard Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title | Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title_full | Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title_fullStr | Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title_full_unstemmed | Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title_short | Tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
title_sort | tracking modern human population history from linguistic and cranial phenotype |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5105118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27833101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36645 |
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