Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116
• Publication Date: 2019-05-14T00:25:49Z
• Authors: Laurent Sagart; Guillaume Jacques; Yunfan Lai; Robin J. Ryder; Valentin Thouzeau; Simon J. Greenhill; Johann-Mattis List
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; China; peopling; Social Sciences; Computational linguistics; [INFO] Computer Science [cs]; Tibet; 410; Linguistique; 03 medical and health sciences; [SHS.STAT] Humanities and Social Sciences/Methods and statistics; Humans; Sino-Tibetan languages; Historical linguistics; East Asia; 10. No inequality; Phylogeny; Language; computer-assisted language comparison; 0303 health sciences; [SHS.ARCHEO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; Multidisciplinary; Linguistics; [SHS.LANGUE] Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics; 400; [SHS] Humanities and Social Sciences; human prehistory

Significance Given its size and geographical extension, Sino-Tibetan is of the highest importance for understanding prehistory East Asia, neighboring language families. Based on a dataset 50 languages, we infer phylogenies that date origin family to around 7200 B.P., linking with late Cishan early Yangshao cultures.