Study: English Language Rooted in Turkey
August 24, 2012
The ruins of an ancient commercial harbor located near Datca, Turkey. Some scientists believe the Indo-European language family, which includes English, began in Turkey.
The beginnings of the English language are rooted in Turkey, a new study suggests.
The Indo-European language family - which includes English, French, Russian, Persian and even ancient Greek - is one of the world’s largest language groups and extends from Iceland in the West to Sri Lanka in the East.
The common origin of all those languages, scientists say, must be somewhere on the European continent.
One hypothesis suggests it emerged 6,000 years ago from a semi-nomadic horse-riding people in the Russian Steppes north of the Caspian Sea.
Another says it is much older and came from what is now Turkey, spreading as agriculture did between 8,000 and 9,500 years ago.
Writing in Science, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand expresses support for the second theory. Quentin Atkinson's team worked in much the same way that evolutionary biologists do, using DNA to determine the origin of virus outbreaks.
“They use the DNA to reconstruct the family tree of the viruses. But rather than looking at viruses, we were looking at languages," he says. "And rather than looking at DNA, we were looking at the words in the different languages.”
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