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Published online on October 3, 2007, 10.1073/pnas.0704451104
PNAS | October 9, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 41 | 16022-16026


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ANTHROPOLOGY
Coevolution of languages and genes on the island of Sumba, eastern Indonesia

J. Stephen Lansing{dagger},{ddagger},§, Murray P. Cox, Sean S. Downey{dagger}, Brandon M. Gabler{dagger}, Brian Hallmark||, Tatiana M. Karafet, Peter Norquest{dagger}, John W. Schoenfelder{dagger},{dagger}{dagger}, Herawati Sudoyo{ddagger}{ddagger}, Joseph C. Watkins||, and Michael F. Hammer

{dagger}Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1009 East South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721; Division of Biotechnology, Biosciences West, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; {ddagger}Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87521; ||Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, 617 North Santa Rita Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721; {dagger}{dagger}Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Los Angeles, CA 90095; and {ddagger}{ddagger}Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, Diponegoro 69, Jakarta 10430, Indonesia

Edited by Simon A. Levin, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved August 23, 2007 (received for review May 15, 2007)

Numerous studies indicate strong associations between languages and genes among human populations at the global scale, but all broader scale genetic and linguistic patterns must arise from processes originating at the community level. We examine linguistic and genetic variation in a contact zone on the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, where Neolithic Austronesian farming communities settled and began interacting with aboriginal foraging societies {approx}3,500 years ago. Phylogenetic reconstruction based on a 200-word Swadesh list sampled from 29 localities supports the hypothesis that Sumbanese languages derive from a single ancestral Austronesian language. However, the proportion of cognates (words with a common origin) traceable to Proto-Austronesian (PAn) varies among language subgroups distributed across the island. Interestingly, a positive correlation was found between the percentage of Y chromosome lineages that derive from Austronesian (as opposed to aboriginal) ancestors and the retention of PAn cognates. We also find a striking correlation between the percentage of PAn cognates and geographic distance from the site where many Sumbanese believe their ancestors arrived on the island. These language–gene–geography correlations, unprecedented at such a fine scale, imply that historical patterns of social interaction between expanding farmers and resident hunter-gatherers largely explain community-level language evolution on Sumba. We propose a model to explain linguistic and demographic coevolution at fine spatial and temporal scales.

Austronesian languages | cognate | contact zone | language evolution | Y chromosome haplogroups

Author contributions: J.S.L. designed research; J.S.L., S.S.D., B.H., T.M.K., and H.S. performed research; S.S.D., B.M.G., B.H., T.M.K., P.N., J.W.S., and J.C.W. analyzed data; and J.S.L., M.P.C., B.H., P.N., J.C.W., and M.F.H. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

§To whom all correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lansing{at}santafe.edu

© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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