The language - gene connection is well advanced in the reference I quoted elsewhere (Magic Universe) - [www.amazon.com]. For example:
'Support for the general idea that languages spread and changed as people moved about, whether peaceably or aggressively came from genetics. Luca Cavilla-Sforza of Stanford with collegues in Italy, used blood samples to chart the similarities and differences between supposedly indigenous inhabitants of all parts of the world. These turned out to be compatible with the dispersal of the ancestors of every person alive today, from a common origin.'
'Assuming that they started with a common language as well as a common set of genes, the primary reason for the differences between modern languages might then be much the same as for the differences in the genes. They drifted apart, over tens of thousands of years. Tribes migrating across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas became separated by distance, neither mating nor speaking with one another.'
'Languages evolve more rapidly than genes do, making it hard to reconstruct a family tree of diverfifying languages that goes all the way back to the first speakers. Nevertheless, nearly every language can be assigned to one or another of about a dozen linguistic superfamilies. With help from Merritt Ruhlen of Stanford and other linguists, Cavalli-Sforza set out in 1987 to match the linguistic superfamilies identified from blood samples. The match seemed impressive, and anomalies were said to be few and unsurprising.'

(Edited to insert link - Hermione)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 12:06PM by Hermione.