A Bayesian phylogeny dates Indo-European to the Anatolian Neolithic
Gray and Atkinson applied Bayesian phylogenetic inference with a relaxed molecular-clock model to Indo-European cognate data and obtained a root age of roughly eight to ten thousand years, consistent with the hypothesis that the family spread with the expansion of farming out of Anatolia rather than with steppe pastoralists in the fourth millennium BCE. The result put a quantitative method behind a hypothesis that comparative linguists had largely rejected, and opened a dispute that is still running. Critics objected to the cognate coding, the calibration priors and the treatment of borrowing.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Bayesian phylogenetic dating of language families · process · not located
- Anatolia · region · Türkiye
- Proto-Indo-European · model · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin
Supports the reported Bayesian root-age estimate for Indo-European of roughly eight to ten thousand years and its use in favour of the Anatolian hypothesis. V55 verification basis: this session had no access to any source — WebFetch was egress-blocked for every host attempted and the WebSearch budget was exhausted before authoring — so the cited work was not retrieved, and no page, volume or figure quoted from it was re-checked. The age is given as a range from standing knowledge of the reported result; the paper's own credible interval is not quoted, and the page range is omitted rather than guessed.
Nature · 2003 · Partly verified
Gray, R. D. and Atkinson, Q. D., Nature, vol. 426 (2003)
Recorded on Bayesian phylogenetic dating of language families
- Proto-Indo-European is spoken
- Saussure posits consonants no language attests
- Kuryłowicz matches Hittite h to Saussure's coefficients
- A language tree is tested against a settlement chronology
- A Bayesian phylogeny dates Indo-European to the Anatolian Neolithic
- Phylogeography puts the Indo-European homeland in Anatolia
- Ancient DNA finds a mass movement from the steppe into Europe
- A dated phylogeny puts Sino-Tibetan at roughly seven thousand years
- A second phylogeny puts the same family at roughly six thousand years
- A hybrid model is proposed for the Indo-European origin
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- A hybrid model is proposed for the Indo-European origin · 2023
- A dated phylogeny puts Sino-Tibetan at roughly seven thousand years · 2019
- A second phylogeny puts the same family at roughly six thousand years · 2019
- Ancient DNA finds a mass movement from the steppe into Europe · 2015
- Phylogeography puts the Indo-European homeland in Anatolia · 2012
- A language tree is tested against a settlement chronology · 2000
- Kuryłowicz matches Hittite h to Saussure's coefficients · 1927
- Saussure posits consonants no language attests · 1879