Spread of Transeurasian Languages Was Due to Agriculture
Published:30 Nov.2021 Source:Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
The origin and early dispersal of Transeurasian languages, including, among others, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic, is among the most disputed issues of Asian prehistory. Although many of the commonalities between these languages are due to borrowing, recent studies have shown a reliable core of evidence supporting the classification of Transeurasian as a genealogical group, or a group of languages that emerged from a common ancestor.
Accepting the ancestral relatedness of these languages and cultures, however, raises questions about when and where the earliest speakers lived, how the descendant cultures sustained themselves and interacted with one another, and the routes of their dispersals throughout the millennia.