Nov 8, 2007
This week we talk to Dr Quentin Atkinson, an evolutionary
psychologist from the University of Reading in the UK, about the
evolution of language in Europe.
Languages, like genes, provide vital clues about human prehistory.
The Indo-European languages, now spoken across Europe and the near
East, show strikingly similar words for some meanings, indicating
that they have come from a common source, now long forgotten.
Atkinson and his team used statistical models of language evolution
derived from evolutionary biology to date the age of the
Indo-European language family and so test between the two main
competing theories of Indo-European origins - the 'Kurgan horsemen'
and 'Anatolian farming' hypotheses.
This podcast also comes from the York Science Festival.