Exploring correlations in genetic and cultural variation across language families in northeast Asia

• DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9223
• Publication Date: 2021-08-18T19:15:27Z
• Authors: Hiromi Matsumae; Peter Ranacher; Patrick E. Savage; Damián E. Blasi; Thomas E. Currie; Kae Koganebuchi; Nao Nishida; Takehiro Sato; Hideyuki Tanabe; Atsushi Tajima; Steven Brown; Mark Stoneking; Kentaro K. Shimizu; Hiroki Oota; Balthasar Bickel
• Keywords: Variation (astronomy)

Culture evolves in ways that are analogous to, but distinct from, genomes. Previous studies examined similarities between cultural variation and genetic (population history) at small scales within language families, few have empirically investigated these parallels across families using diverse data. We report an analysis comparing culture genomes from around northeast Asia spanning 11 families. extract summarize the (grammar, phonology, lexicon), music (song structure, performance style), (genome-wide SNPs) test for correlations. find grammatical structure correlates with population history (genetic history). Recent contact shared descent fail to explain signal, suggesting relationships arose before formation of current Our results suggest grammar might be a indicator while also demonstrating differences among highlight complex nature human history.