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
albit moonstone
Antignac
apparent volume of distribution
ara (agricultural research association)
arupite
atom-meter
baccari
bodmer
bratty
Cheluridae
chemically active plasticizer
clickity
client money
coding relay
continuous spinning process
conversational communication
Convoy Range
cooling rate of parent body
curved solid
Darwha
depth of frame
Dixon, Jim
electrodialitically
ex mill
expressive culture
external validity
fetteran
fishtail palms
franchise mode
Gastrodia flavilabella
genus Ariocarpus
Gettnau
go for gold
ground bunker
guano phosphate
Gyrocotyloidea
heterojunction photocathode
hit lady
hot rolled steel
hot water rocket engine
hydromagnesium
Ibros
intergrated design
interracializes
jarde
Karasevka
Karelia
linear radiation source
longitudinal magnetoresistance
lyke wake
Mars Hill
master-slave spreader
messy
Mibenge
microcurrent
minimized construction gage
mispassion
Mister Bigs
mitterands
munsterplatz
mutation lethal
nappe inlier
neutral reaction
nontariff distortion
open-type wharf
out of band signaling
per unit length
perch
population movement
positive definite Hermitian form
prebacillary
productive memory
quale
radio-pagings
Reactive Brilliant Red K-2BP
resistance determining factor
rikshaws
Sclavo's sera
self propelled drill
semiweak key
shopfitters
soil stratification
spatial nonuniformity
subensemble
taconic movement
tailored legend
tape interchangeability
Tasmanians
telegraph register
thin segment
tingler
trial jurisdiction
trinationally
under ground water
unique identifier
verifones
Voges-Proskauer reaction
weibull probability graph paper
went overboard
zakiyev
zero mobility position
zootrophic