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Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic
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Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic
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Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic
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Journal Article
Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic
2019
Overview
The study of language origin and divergence is important for understanding the history of human populations and their cultures. The Sino-Tibetan language family is the second largest in the world after Indo-European, and there is a long-running debate about its phylogeny and the time depth of its original divergence
1
. Here we perform a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to examine two competing hypotheses of the origin of the Sino-Tibetan language family: the ‘northern-origin hypothesis’ and the ‘southwestern-origin hypothesis’. The northern-origin hypothesis states that the initial expansion of Sino-Tibetan languages occurred approximately 4,000–6,000 years before present (
bp
; taken as
ad
1950) in the Yellow River basin of northern China
2
–
4
, and that this expansion is associated with the development of the Yangshao and/or Majiayao Neolithic cultures. The southwestern-origin hypothesis states that an early expansion of Sino-Tibetan languages occurred before 9,000 years
bp
from a region in southwest Sichuan province in China
5
or in northeast India
6
, where a high diversity of Tibeto-Burman languages exists today. Consistent with the northern-origin hypothesis, our Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of 109 languages with 949 lexical root-meanings produced an estimated time depth for the divergence of Sino-Tibetan languages of approximately 4,200–7,800 years
bp
, with an average value of approximately 5,900 years
bp
. In addition, the phylogeny supported a dichotomy between Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages. Our results are compatible with the archaeological records, and with the farming and language dispersal hypothesis
7
of agricultural expansion in China. Our findings provide a linguistic foothold for further interdisciplinary studies of prehistoric human activity in East Asia.
Divergence estimates from phylogenetic analyses of 109 languages of the Sino-Tibetan family support a model in which this family originates in the Yellow River basin of northern China.
