All Languages Linked To Common Source

Old Wolf writes "A New Zealand evolutionary psychologist, Quentin Atkinson, has created a scientific sensation by claiming to have discovered the mother of all mother tongues. 'Dr Atkinson took 504 languages and plotted the number of phonemes in each (corrected for recent population growth, when significant) against the distance between the place where the language is spoken and 2,500 putative points of origin, scattered across the world (abstract). The relationship that emerges suggests the actual point of origin is in central or southern Africa, and that all modern languages do, indeed, have a common root." Reader NotSanguine points out another study which challenges the idea that the brain is more important to the structure of language than cultural evolution.

Comments

Re:Not what the Bible says.

[aepervius]

"I'd say the bible got the broad strokes of the truth right, even if only by accident."

Yeah and my grand father clock (a monster about 1m50 high with a pendulum) is broken. It is giving the correct time twice a day. But to know the correct hour time any time during the day, I use the tool appropriated for this : a working clock.

To go back to your "bible" stuff : the problem is not that there is *some* element which were taken from the history or are accidentally true (the hour correct twice a day). The problem is that they are indistinguishable from the rest of the cruft (the rest of the hour in the day). Which is mostly why the bible as a whole , is a terrible morality , historical or archeological guide.