“宇宙的盡頭是 （東北）鐵嶺”，這是段曾廣為流傳的網(wǎng)絡(luò)段子，充滿幽默成分，但中國(guó)東北真的攤上“人類大事”了。它肯定不是宇宙的盡頭，但可能是數(shù)億人說(shuō)的語(yǔ)言的源頭！
根據(jù)路透社報(bào)道，一項(xiàng)綜合了語(yǔ)言、基因和考古學(xué)證據(jù)的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，包括現(xiàn)代日語(yǔ)、韓語(yǔ)、土耳其語(yǔ)和蒙古語(yǔ)等同一語(yǔ)系的語(yǔ)言以及說(shuō)這些語(yǔ)言的人，都起源于大約 9000 年前生活在中國(guó)東北地區(qū)種植谷子的古代農(nóng)民。
A study combining linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of the family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in northeastern China about 9,000 years ago.
The researchers from Britain, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, the Netherlands and the United States published their findings in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The origins and degree to which the five groups that make up the Transeurasian family are related has long been an area of contention among scholars, but the team said that recent studies “have shown a reliable core of evidence” supporting the theory that they emerged from a common ancestor.
The researchers said a data set representing more than 250 vocabulary concepts in 98 languages showed the roots of the language family reaching back 9,181 years to millet farmers living in the region of the West Liao River.
There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as: various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.
This language family's beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across northeastern Asia, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago over thousands of years.
這份研究的主要作者馬丁·羅貝茲（Martine Robbeets）坦言：“接受自己的語(yǔ)言、文化和祖先來(lái)自現(xiàn)有的國(guó)家邊界之外，是一種身份的屈服，這讓一些人還沒(méi)準(zhǔn)備好。”
Accepting that the roots of one's language, culture or people lie beyond the present national boundaries is a kind of surrender of identity, which some people are not yet prepared to make," said comparative linguist Martine Robbeets, leader of the Archaeolinguistic Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
來(lái)源：路透社 南華早報(bào)
本文轉(zhuǎn)自于 中國(guó)日?qǐng)?bào)雙語(yǔ)新聞
