Anthropology Watch

Genetics Can Track How Languages Mixed in the Past– www.scientificamerican.com
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September 18, 2025

3 min read

Genetics Can Track How Languages Mixed in the Past

New research shows that wherever human populations mix, their languages blend as well

By Cody Cottier edited by Allison Parshall

When speakers of different languages meet, their words, sounds and even grammatical structures mingle in surprising ways. Ketchup, for example, may be an American staple today, but its name entered English via the Chinese language Hokkien around the end of the 17th century. Or consider the phrase “attorney general”: we place the adjective after the noun because that was standard word order in French when the Normans invaded England in 1066. This kind of exchange, called linguistic “borrowing,” is a big part of how languages evolve worldwide.

Because of gaps in the historical record of human encounters, it can be hard to measure exactly how contact between different populations shaped any given language over the years. But a vestige of all those past interactions persists in human DNA: whenever a person’s genes indicate their ancestors came from two separate populations, it stands to reason that said ancestors interacted closely enough for their languages to merge, too. So a team of researchers analyzed genetic data from nearly 5,000 individuals living in the last few decades, spanning every inhabited continent, and identified 126 cases where those individuals’ ancestry indicated interbreeding between two distinct populations at some point in the past. Though a person’s genetic heritage doesn’t necessarily reflect the language they speak, the researchers expected to find similarities between the languages spoken by those converging groups.

Early humans reached Europe via an Ice Age land bridge from Turkey– www.popsci.com
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It took time for ancient humans to finally arrive in present-day Europe. The common consensus is that some of the earliest Homo sapiens trekked thousands of miles from Africa and across the Middle East before reaching the Balkans. However, an archaeological team in Turkey says a major historical reassessment is required after they discovered nearly 140 Stone Age artifacts along the country’s Aegean coast. According to their study published on September 18 in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, early humans also crossed a now submerged land route that once linked Turkey to Europe.

The Aegean coast of Ayvalık in Turkey is composed of numerous islands and peninsulas today, but the region looked quite different 2.58 million—11,700 years ago during the Pleistocene Ice Age. During this epoch, expanses of coastal plains revealed themselves as sea levels dropped by around 330 feet. These climatic shifts allowed the formation of continual landmasses, including one that bridged Anatolia and Europe.

“In all these periods, the present-day islands and peninsulas of Ayvalık would have formed interior zones within an expansive terrestrial environment,” study co-author Kadriye Özçelik said in a statement.