Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistic Diversity

Abstract

The current convergence is outlined between the three approaches to human diversity now offered by the disciplines of archaeology, historical linguistics and molecular genetics. The potentialities and pitfalls in the genetic evidence are reviewed. The outlines of the new account of linguistic diversity which may now be discerned receive a measure of support from the genetic evidence which is, however, especially in its application to the origins of the world's languages, subject to problems of interpretation. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all the extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects had to be included, such an arrangement would, I think, be the only possible one .. this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and modern, by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue (Darwin 1859: 405). It seems to me obvious that, though, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, unity of languages may afford a certain presumption in favour of the unity of stock of the peoples speaking those languages, it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock, unless philologers are prepared to demonstrate that no nation can lose its language and acquire that of a distinct nation, without a change of blood corresponding with the change of language (Huxley 1865: 260).