Here’s a link to a brief article by Edmund Blair Bolles regarding the current research into FOXP2, from which this is the introduction:
A letter to the current issue of Nature has caused a stir among those interested in the evolution of language. It looks at the FOXP2 gene in more detail than any paper has [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Linguistic Anthropology’
November 16, 2009
The FOXP2 Molecular Network Begins Taking Shape – Babel’s Dawn
July 26, 2009
Four Stone Hearth 72 – Call for Submissions
The 72nd edition of the Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival is due to appear this coming Wednesday, July 29th, and will be hosted by Carl over at A Hot Cup of Joe – so if you’ve recently written something of your own, or seen a post on another blog you deem worthy of consideration [...]
October 31, 2008
On The Genetic Similarities & Linguistic Diversity Of The People From The Bismarck Archipelago & Bougainville, Melanesia
A new paper in the open access journal PLoS Genetics reports on a comparison of genetic, geographic, and linguistic patterns of the diverse populations found on the major islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and Bougainville, Melanesia. The paper is titled, “Genetic and Linguistic Coevolution in Northern Island Melanesia.” I think that Simon Greenhill of HENRY [...]
August 19, 2008
The Mitochondrial & Y-Chromosome Variation Of The Talysh From Iran & Azerbaijan
Ivan Nasidze and Mark Stoneking, along with a half dozen or so other colleagues, have studied the mitochondrial and Y-chromosome diversity of the Talysh. They’ve published their analysis in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The paper can be found under this title, “mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation in the Talysh of Iran and Azerbaijan.”
The Talysh [...]
August 1, 2008
Simulated Linguistic Evolution In The Laboratory
About a week ago, I read and posted on a summary piece on cultural evolution research in PLoS Biology. The reviewer introduced me to Simon Kirby’s work, which I found remarkable. Kirby and colleagues setup an experiment, one that observed the evolution of an artificial language from a set of random terms to an ordered, [...]
July 23, 2008
Can There Be A Synthesis Between Cultural And Biological Evolution?
Language is a product of culture. Or is it? Which came first — language or culture? That’s like asking if the chicken or the egg came first. But cultural behavior has been documented in animals who do not have language systems, like gorillas who have intricate systems of processing plants. Richard Byrne summarized this behavior,
“Gorillas [...]
July 8, 2008
The Diversity of Languages in the Caucasus
The linguistic diversity of the Caucasus is a unique phenomenon, similar to that of New Guinea. There are approximately 6,000 languages spoken throughout the world currently and about 820 (~14%) of them are spoken in New Guinea. In the Caucasus, you can expect to find representative languages from the Kartvelian, Abkhaz-Adyghe, Lesgian, Nakh, Indo-European, Avar-Andi-Dido, [...]
June 14, 2008
“Cracking the Code,” Learn how to read and speak Mayan based off of Stela 3
I’ve been extremely busy this last week. Busy with finals and organizing my graduation ceremonies to keep up with blogging. I finally got some time to catch up, take a deep breath and dive into the backlog of anthropology news. I’ve found some interesting things and will blog about it now that my life isn’t [...]
May 26, 2008
David Harrison speaks about “When Languages Die”
About 9 months ago, I shared some news of language extinction and the conservation efforts of K. David Harrison and David Anderson. My coverage was far from a thorough treatment of the subject, partially because I know little about the problem and the ways to remedy it. Fast forward to today, where I come across [...]
