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Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route

The Bantu expansion transformed the linguistic, economic, and cultural composition of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the exact dates and routes taken by the ancestors of the speakers of the more than 500 current Bantu languages remain uncertain. Here, we use the recently developed “break-away” geograp...

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Autores principales: Koile, Ezequiel, Greenhill, Simon J., Blasi, Damián E., Bouckaert, Remco, Gray, Russell D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9372543/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35914165
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112853119
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author Koile, Ezequiel
Greenhill, Simon J.
Blasi, Damián E.
Bouckaert, Remco
Gray, Russell D.
author_facet Koile, Ezequiel
Greenhill, Simon J.
Blasi, Damián E.
Bouckaert, Remco
Gray, Russell D.
author_sort Koile, Ezequiel
collection PubMed
description The Bantu expansion transformed the linguistic, economic, and cultural composition of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the exact dates and routes taken by the ancestors of the speakers of the more than 500 current Bantu languages remain uncertain. Here, we use the recently developed “break-away” geographical diffusion model, specially designed for modeling migrations, with “augmented” geographic information, to reconstruct the Bantu language family expansion. This Bayesian phylogeographic approach with augmented geographical data provides a powerful way of linking linguistic, archaeological, and genetic data to test hypotheses about large language family expansions. We compare four hypotheses: an early major split north of the rainforest; a migration through the Sangha River Interval corridor around 2,500 BP; a coastal migration around 4,000 BP; and a migration through the rainforest before the corridor opening, at 4,000 BP. Our results produce a topology and timeline for the Bantu language family, which supports the hypothesis of an expansion through Central African tropical forests at 4,420 BP (4,040 to 5,000 95% highest posterior density interval), well before the Sangha River Interval was open.
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spelling pubmed-93725432022-08-13 Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route Koile, Ezequiel Greenhill, Simon J. Blasi, Damián E. Bouckaert, Remco Gray, Russell D. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences The Bantu expansion transformed the linguistic, economic, and cultural composition of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the exact dates and routes taken by the ancestors of the speakers of the more than 500 current Bantu languages remain uncertain. Here, we use the recently developed “break-away” geographical diffusion model, specially designed for modeling migrations, with “augmented” geographic information, to reconstruct the Bantu language family expansion. This Bayesian phylogeographic approach with augmented geographical data provides a powerful way of linking linguistic, archaeological, and genetic data to test hypotheses about large language family expansions. We compare four hypotheses: an early major split north of the rainforest; a migration through the Sangha River Interval corridor around 2,500 BP; a coastal migration around 4,000 BP; and a migration through the rainforest before the corridor opening, at 4,000 BP. Our results produce a topology and timeline for the Bantu language family, which supports the hypothesis of an expansion through Central African tropical forests at 4,420 BP (4,040 to 5,000 95% highest posterior density interval), well before the Sangha River Interval was open. National Academy of Sciences 2022-08-01 2022-08-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9372543/ /pubmed/35914165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112853119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Koile, Ezequiel
Greenhill, Simon J.
Blasi, Damián E.
Bouckaert, Remco
Gray, Russell D.
Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title_full Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title_fullStr Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title_full_unstemmed Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title_short Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
title_sort phylogeographic analysis of the bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9372543/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35914165
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112853119
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