This week we talk to Dr Quentin Atkinson, an evolutionary psychologist
from the University of Reading in the UK, about the evolution of
language in Europe.
Languages, like genes, provide vital clues
about human prehistory. The Indo-European languages, now spoken across
Europe and the near East, show strikingly similar words for some
meanings, indicating that they have come from a common source, now long
forgotten. Atkinson and his team used statistical models of language
evolution derived from evolutionary biology to date the age of the
Indo-European language family and so test between the two main
competing theories of Indo-European origins - the 'Kurgan horsemen' and
'Anatolian farming' hypotheses.
This podcast also comes from the York Science Festival.
