Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative - Archive ouverte HAL Access content directly
Preprints, Working Papers, ... (Preprint) Year :

Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative

Zheng Tian
Yuxin Tao
  • Function : Author
Kongyang Zhu
  • Function : Author
Guillaume Jacques
Robin Ryder
  • Function : Author
Anton Antonov
Ziyang Xia
  • Function : Author
Yuxuan Zhang
  • Function : Author
Xiaoyan Ji
  • Function : Author
Xiaoying Ren
  • Function : Author
Guanglin He
  • Function : Author
Jianxin Guo
  • Function : Author
Rui Wang
  • Function : Author
Xiaomin Yang
  • Function : Author
Jing Zhao
  • Function : Author
Dan Xu
  • Function : Author
Russell Gray
  • Function : Author
Menghan Zhang
  • Function : Author
Shaoqing Wen
  • Function : Author
Chuan-Chao Wang
  • Function : Author

Abstract

Robbeets et al. (2021) argue that the dispersal of the so-called “Transeurasian” languages, a highly disputed language superfamily comprising the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic language families, was driven by Neolithic farmers in the West Liao River region of China. They adduce evidence from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to support their claim. An admirable feature of the Robbeets et al.’s paper is that all their datasets can be accessed. However, a closer investigation of all three types of evidence reveals fundamental problems with each of them. Robbeets et al.’s analysis of the linguistic data does not conform to the minimal standards required by traditional scholarship in historical linguistics and contradicts their own stated sound correspondence principles. A reanalysis of the genetic data finds that they do not conclusively support the farming-driven dispersal of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, nor the two-wave spread of farming to Korea. Their archaeological data contain little phylogenetic signal, and we failed to reproduce the results supporting their core hypotheses about migrations. Given the severe problems we identify in all three parts of the “triangulation” process, we conclude that there is neither conclusive evidence for a Transeurasian language family nor for associating the five different language families with the spread of Neolithic farmers from the West Liao River region.

Dates and versions

hal-03702507 , version 1 (23-06-2022)

Licence

Attribution

Identifiers

Cite

Zheng Tian, Yuxin Tao, Kongyang Zhu, Guillaume Jacques, Robin Ryder, et al.. Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative. 2022. ⟨hal-03702507⟩
57 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More