时间:2019-01-20 作者:英语课 分类:2015年Scientific American(三)月


英语课
Modern European languages tend to share their names with the places they're spoken. Swedish: Sweden. German: Germany. And so on. But where'd they come from before that? One theory is the "Anatolian hypothesis," Anatolia referring roughly to the Asian part of Turkey. "So the proposal was that it was agriculturalists from the Near East and present-day Turkey and Cyprus who were bringing agriculture to Europe. And that this mass movement of people bringing agriculture, also brought languages." David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School.
 
The Anatolian hypothesis has languages from the Indo-European family hitting Europe around 8,500 years ago. But as with any academic theory, there's a competing idea: the so-called "steppe hypothesis." Which says it was herders—not farmers—who galloped in from the grasslands of central Asia five or six thousand years ago, bringing language with them. But the steppe hypothesis was lacking for evidence.
 
Now Reich and his colleagues have analyzed the DNA found in the remains of 94 ancient Europeans. And this molecular evidence does indeed point to a migration from the steppe into central Europe about 4,500 years ago. "And it's a massive event—at least three quarters of the population got replaced by people who are never in that part of continental Europe before." The finding is in the journal Nature. [Wolfgang Haak et al, Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe]
 
Of course old bones tell us only so much. "So genetics is of course silent on the languages people spoke and we'll never be able to figure that out. We can only determine migrations occurred." But a migration of this scale, he says, surely delivered at least some of Europe's languages. "Perhaps the languages spoken in parts of northern Europe today"—like the one I'm speaking right now.

学英语单词
a cat in the pan
aci form
andalou
angina nosocomii
Aquileian
attitude disturbance
baby's pap
basilicok
beretlike
bheu-
brown forest soil
building finishing
calyptrimorphous
canbra oil
carbonated wine
Carex liqingii
central stringer
chane
charlie l.
China Ocean Shipping Supply Corporation
chrismal
classification of system
coinstantiate
come into bud
contact inhibitor
contractual democracy
converse domain
counting printer
CYT-18
Denticipitoidei
differential dynamical system
diphenmethanil
Dolcontral
draconis
enter mode
Federal standard
Fourier sectrum
full growth
furnace burdening
gabionades
gainliest
general relativity
genus acrocliniums
grose
ground vegetative cover
hack the sea
Hammerschlag's phenomenon
hard-surfaced
harlean carpenters
heat-removal mechanism
himantopus stilts
horizontal architecture
Huixiang Juhe Wan
hyperperfect number
hypersomia
in properticn
indirect comprehension
isopotentials
jacket launching
Lagotis integra
line Of occlusion
macroheterogeneity
mcternan
metradynamomete
mezzo staccato
Midland Bank
New Zealand on Air
orebi
out-smile
outsqueezing
overapplied overhead
Phlomis ruptilis
phyllochlamys
pneumatic aeration
poor diesel fuel
prophoretin
prototyping card system
quhow
ragment
rangh
reflected beam kinescope
regenerated forest under strip system
removal of engine
reverse valve stem
Route Twisk
semilunar ganglion (or gasserian ganglion)
Seneffe
snipiness
sorabji
tazmanias
terminal user
thermodenuders
thermodynamic yield
total preparation
triethyl methyl lead
ultralow frequency
undescriptive
unnun
war-leader
windsong
yamadoris