SF News – Tracing origins of viruses scientists have found a way to trace back origins of languages. The recent finding shows that the origin of the Persian language, Farsi, which is considered an Indo-European language, was in fact in Anatolia (today’s Turkey).
Different dialects of Farsi is currently spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. That while there is a considerable Farsi speaking population in most European, North America and Asian countries.
The Indo-European languages that include English, Spanish, German, Farsi, and Hindi, came from present day Turkey some 8000 to 9500 years ago, says the new hypothesis. They originated in the surrounding of the Caspian Sea and spread into Europe and the Middle East. The hypothesis says that they spread with expansion of agriculture throughout that region.
The virus scientists believe they have developed an entirely new methodology to study prehistoric human and its behavior using information received by tracing languages. The method allows scientists to follow language relationships in different parts of the world throughout history.
The study that was published Tuesday in the journal of Science used a complex computer model, which was originally designed to map epidemics and trace the evolution of the Indo-European language family.
The study used a massive database of common words — or cognates – used by these languages, both modern and ancient to trace the roots all the way back to Turkey. Words such as mother in English which is madar in Farsi or madre in Spanish helped the scientists build a family tree for the languages which then placed them in a specific time and space leading back to the origin. The word’s similarities are too much and too often to be considered a mere coincident.
