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The largest movements and replacements of human populationssince the end of the Ice Ages resulted from the geographicallyuneven rise of food production around the world. The first farmingsocieties thereby gained great advantages over hunter-gatherersocieties. But most of those resulting shifts of populationsand languages are complex, controversial, or both. We discussthe main complications and specific examples involving 15 languagefamilies. Further progress will depend on interdisciplinaryresearch that combines archaeology, crop and livestock studies,physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics.
1 Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524, USA. 2 School of Archaeology and Anthropology and Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT, 0200, Australia. E-mail: jdiamond{at}geog.ucla.edu (J.D.); peter.bellwood{at}anu.edu.au (P.B.)
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[DOI: 10.1126/science.306.5702.1680c] |Full Text »|PDF »
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