<p>The common ancestral language of Indo-European languages - such as Hindi, English and Greek - originated about 5,500-6,500 years ago, scientists have found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Linguists have long agreed that Indo-European languages are the modern descendants of a language family which first emerged from a common ancestor spoken thousands of years ago.<br /><br />Now, a new study gives us more information on when and where it was most likely used.<br /><br />Using data from over 150 languages, linguists at the University of California, Berkeley provide evidence that this ancestor language originated 5,500-6,500 years ago, on the Pontic-Caspian steppe stretching from Moldova and Ukraine to Russia and western Kazakhstan.<br /><br />The research provides new support for the "steppe hypothesis" or "Kurgan hypothesis," which proposes that Indo-European languages first spread with cultural developments in animal husbandry around 4500-3500 BC.<br /><br />An alternate theory proposes that they diffused much earlier, around 7500-6000 BC, in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.<br /><br />Researcher Will Chang and colleagues examined over 200 sets of words from living and dead Indo-European languages; after determining how quickly these words changed over time through statistical modelling.<br /><br />They concluded that the rate of change indicated that the languages which first used these words began to diverge approximately 6,500 years ago, in accordance with the steppe hypothesis.<br /><br />This is one of the first quantitatively-based academic papers in support of the steppe hypothesis, and the first to use a model with "ancestry constraints" which more directly incorporate previously discovered relationships between languages, researchers said.<br /><br />In future research, methods from this study could be used to study the origins of other language families, such as Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan, researchers said.<br />The research appears in the journal Language</p>
<p>The common ancestral language of Indo-European languages - such as Hindi, English and Greek - originated about 5,500-6,500 years ago, scientists have found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Linguists have long agreed that Indo-European languages are the modern descendants of a language family which first emerged from a common ancestor spoken thousands of years ago.<br /><br />Now, a new study gives us more information on when and where it was most likely used.<br /><br />Using data from over 150 languages, linguists at the University of California, Berkeley provide evidence that this ancestor language originated 5,500-6,500 years ago, on the Pontic-Caspian steppe stretching from Moldova and Ukraine to Russia and western Kazakhstan.<br /><br />The research provides new support for the "steppe hypothesis" or "Kurgan hypothesis," which proposes that Indo-European languages first spread with cultural developments in animal husbandry around 4500-3500 BC.<br /><br />An alternate theory proposes that they diffused much earlier, around 7500-6000 BC, in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.<br /><br />Researcher Will Chang and colleagues examined over 200 sets of words from living and dead Indo-European languages; after determining how quickly these words changed over time through statistical modelling.<br /><br />They concluded that the rate of change indicated that the languages which first used these words began to diverge approximately 6,500 years ago, in accordance with the steppe hypothesis.<br /><br />This is one of the first quantitatively-based academic papers in support of the steppe hypothesis, and the first to use a model with "ancestry constraints" which more directly incorporate previously discovered relationships between languages, researchers said.<br /><br />In future research, methods from this study could be used to study the origins of other language families, such as Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan, researchers said.<br />The research appears in the journal Language</p>