Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 May 21;116(21):10317-10322.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116. Epub 2019 May 6.

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Laurent Sagart  1 , Guillaume Jacques  1 , Yunfan Lai  2 , Robin J Ryder  3 , Valentin Thouzeau  3 , Simon J Greenhill  2   4 , Johann-Mattis List  5
Affiliations

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Laurent Sagart et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The Sino-Tibetan language family is one of the world's largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people. Despite the importance of the Sino-Tibetan languages, their prehistory remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. To shed light on this debate we develop a database of comparative linguistic data, and apply the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. We then use phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland. Our findings point to Sino-Tibetan originating with north Chinese millet farmers around 7200 B.P. and suggest a link to the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.

Keywords: East Asia; Sino-Tibetan languages; computer-assisted language comparison; human prehistory; peopling.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Languages in our sample, contrasted with ancient sites reflecting early stages of domestication and the estimated spread of non-Sinitic languages (see Homeland, Archaeology, and Agriculture). Ancient language locations reflect supposed political and cultural epicenters of the varieties.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
The Maximum Clade Credibility tree from the best-fitting model (relaxed clock with covarion). Branches with less than 0.8 posterior probability are dashed; other branches have posterior probabilities >0.8. For densitrees of the data, see SI Appendix, section 4.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Hammarström H, Forkel R, Haspelmath M. Glottolog. MPI-SHH; Jena, Germany: 2018.
    1. Haak W, et al. Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature. 2015;522:207–211. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Allentoft ME, et al. Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. Nature. 2015;522:167–172. - PubMed
    1. Bouckaert R, et al. Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science. 2012;337:957–960. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Garnier R, Sagart L, Sagot B. Language Dispersal Beyond Farming. John Benjamins; Amsterdam: 2017. Milk and the Indo-Europeans; pp. 291–311.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources