ArticleScientific reports2020
Dated phylogeny suggests early Neolithic origin of Sino-Tibetan languages.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 11 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Multiple waves of westward dry-land agriculture expansions along the East Silk Road during the Neolithic age.Fundamental research · 2026Article
- The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset.Scientific data · 2025Article
- A macroevolutionary analysis of European Late Upper Palaeolithic stone tool shape using a Bayesian phylodynamic framework.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Inferring language dispersal patterns with velocity field estimation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Investigating environmental effects on phonology using diachronic models.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Phylogenetic insight into the origin of tones.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Whole mitochondrial genome analysis in highland Tibetans: further matrilineal genetic structure exploration.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Archaeological evidence for initial migration of Neolithic Proto Sino-Tibetan speakers from Yellow River valley to Tibetan Plateau.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Impact of cultural and genetic structure on food choices along the Silk Road.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Cultural extinction in evolutionary perspective.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
An accurate reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan language evolution would greatly advance our understanding of East Asian population history. Two recent phylogenetic studies attempted to do so but several of their conclusions are different from each other. Here we reconstruct the phylogeny of the Sino-Tibetan language family, using Bayesian computational methods applied to a larger and linguistically more diverse sample. Our results confirm previous work in finding that the ancestral Sino-Tibetans first split into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman clades, and support the existence of key internal relationships. But we find that the initial divergence of this group occurred earlier than previously suggested, at approximately 8000 years before the present, coinciding with the onset of millet-based agriculture and significant environmental changes in the Yellow River region. Our findings illustrate that key aspects of phylogenetic history can be replicated in this complex language family, and calls for a more nuanced understanding of the first Sino-Tibetan speakers in relation to the "early farming dispersal" theory of language evolution.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.