More Rule than Exception: Parallel Evidence of Ancient Migrations in Grammars and Genomes of Finno-Ugric Speakers.

ABSTRACT: To reconstruct aspects of human demographic history, linguistics and genetics complement each other, reciprocally suggesting testable hypotheses on population relationships and interactions. Relying on a linguistic comparative method based on syntactic data, here we focus on the non-straightforward relation of genes and languages among Finno-Ugric (FU) speakers, in comparison to their Indo-European (IE) and Altaic (AL) neighbors. Syntactic analysis, in agreement with the indications of more traditional linguistic levels, supports at least three distinct clusters, corresponding to these three Eurasian families; yet, the outliers of the FU group show linguistic convergence with their geographical neighbors. By analyzing genome-wide data in both ancient and contemporary populations, we uncove

SUBMITTER: Santos P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7763979 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature