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http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/eurasiatic-languages-from-one-

tongue/article4694106.ece

Today's Paper INTERNATIONAL May 8, 2013

Eurasiatic languages from one tongue?Ian Sample

Languages spoken by billions of people across Europe and Asia are descended from anancient tongue uttered in southern Europe at the end of the last ice age, according to

research.

The claim, by scientists in Britain, points to a common origin for vocabularies as varied

as English and Urdu, Japanese and Itelmen, a language spoken along the north-easternedge of Russia.

The ancestral language, spoken at least 15,000 years ago, gave rise to seven more that

formed an ancient Eurasiatic superfamily, the researchers say. These in turn split into

languages now spoken all over Eurasia, from Portugal to Siberia.

Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of

people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets

were retreating, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University.

Linguists have long debated the idea of an ancient Eurasiatic superfamily of languages.The idea is controversial because many words evolve too rapidly to preserve their

ancestry. Most words have a 50 per cent chance of being replaced by an unrelated termevery 2,000-4,000 years.

But some words last much longer. In a previous study, Mr. Pagels team showed thatcertain words among them frequently used pronouns, numbers and adverbs

survived for tens of thousands of years before other words replaced them.

For their latest study, Mr. Pagel used a computer model to predict words that changed so

rarely that they should sound the same in the different Eurasiatic languages. They thenchecked their list against a database of early words reconstructed by linguists. Sure

enough, said Mr. Pagel, the words we predicted would be similar, were similar.

Writing inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the authors list 23 words

found in at least four of the proposed Eurasiatic languages. Most of the words arefrequently used ones, such as the pronouns I and we, and the nouns, man and

mother. But the survival of other terms was more baffling.

The verb to spit, and the nouns bark and worm all had lengthy histories.

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Bark was really important to early people, said Mr. Pagel. They used it as insulation,

to start fires, and they made fibres from it. But I couldnt say I expected to spit to be

there. I have no idea why. Only a handful of verbs appear on the list, but Mr. Pagelpoints out to give, which appeared in similar form in five of the Eurasiatic languages.

From their findings, the scientists drew up a family tree of the seven languages. Allemerged from a common tongue around 15,000 years ago, and split off into separate

languages over the next 5,000 years.

The very fact that we can identify these words that retain traces of their deep ancestry

tells us something fundamental about our language faculties. It tells us we have this

ability to transmit highly complicated and precise information from mouth to ear over

tens of thousands of years, said Mr. Pagel. Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2013

Scientists in Britain point to a common origin for vocabularies as varied as English

and Urdu