Languages such as Japanese, Turkish, Korean and Mongolian probably go back to a common original language that was spoken by millet farmers in Northeast Asia around 9,000 years ago. This is suggested by a new study that combined genetic, archaeological and linguistic clues to get to the bottom of the origins of the so-called Altaic or Trans-Eurasian languages. The spread of the language was therefore driven by agriculture.
The origin and early spread of the Trans-Eurasian languages, which include Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Turkish, are among the most controversial questions in Asian prehistory. The languages have a lot in common, but these are largely due to borrowings through later cultural contacts. Still, research suggests that they share a common origin. When and where this was, however, was unclear. Since writing was only invented about 5,000 years ago, linguists have to refer to other sources for questions relating to earlier periods.
Combination of linguistics, archeology and genetics
A team led by Martine Robbeets from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Man in Jena has now combined linguistic, archaeological and genetic clues to uncover the mystery. “We show that the common origin and the original distribution of the Trans-Eurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers who roamed Northeast Asia since the early Neolithic,” the researchers write.
The combination of methods was decisive for this result. “Taken alone, a single discipline cannot conclusively clarify the big questions of language spread, but taken together the three disciplines increase the credibility and validity of this scenario,” says Robbeets. “By bringing together the evidence from the three disciplines, we have gained a more balanced and comprehensive understanding of trans-Eurasian migration than any of the three disciplines could offer on its own.”
“Millet” in inherited vocabulary
For the linguistic part of the study, Robbeets and her colleagues compiled an extensive data set of over 3000 related terms from 98 trans-Eurasian languages, including dialects and historical language variants. While many of these terms were probably later borrowings, the researchers were able to identify a core vocabulary that is similar in all languages and with a high degree of probability goes back to a common original language. Many of these words related to agriculture and textile production – for example field, sowing, grinding and weaving. The word for millet is also part of this core vocabulary, but names for other grains such as rice and wheat are not.
This finding, in turn, fits in with archaeological evidence, according to which people in the West Liao River Basin in northern China grew millet and made woven clothing around 9,000 years ago, while other crops were cultivated much later. This is shown by analyzes of 255 Neolithic and Bronze Age sites, which among other things contained numerous grain samples. According to the researchers, the cultivation of millet meant that the population could increase. As a result, the farmers spread into new areas and displaced the local hunters and gatherers and their languages. The culture of the millet farmers split into two branches, which subsequently developed separately in terms of language. The Japanese and Korean languages emerged from one branch, the Turkish and Mongolian languages from the other.
Common genetic roots
Genetic evidence also supports this hypothesis. The researchers compared numerous ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu Islands in Japan, and other parts of East Asia. In addition, they included genetic analyzes of people from Eurasia today. They found that all speakers of Trans-Eurasian languages have a common genetic component, the so-called “Amur-like descent”. The genetic data also show later intermingling with people from other regions of Asia, suggesting that the spread of the trans-Eurasian-speaking population coincided with the introduction of agriculture.
“With new evidence from ancient DNA, our research confirms recent findings that Japanese and Korean populations descended from the West Liao River, while contradicting previous claims that there is no genetic correlate of the Trans-Eurasian language family,” the researchers write. From Robbeet’s point of view, the results also have implications for the sense of national identity: “To accept that the roots of one’s own language – and to a certain extent also one’s own culture – lie beyond the current national borders can require a kind of reorientation of identity, and this one Stepping is not always easy for people, ”she says. “But the science of human history shows us that the history of all languages, cultures and peoples is a story of extensive interaction and intermingling.”
Source: Martine Robbeets (Max Planck Institute for the History of Man, Jena) et al., Nature, doi: 10.1038 / s41586-021-04108-8