The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia

It remains a mystery how Pama–Nyungan, the world’s largest hunter-gatherer language family, came to dominate the Australian continent. Some argue that social or technological advantages allowed rapid language replacement from the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene. Others have proposed expansions from refugia linked to climatic changes after the last ice age or, more controversially, during the initial colonization of Australia. Here, we combine basic vocabulary data from 306 Pama–Nyungan languages with Bayesian phylogeographic methods to explicitly model the expansion of the family across Australia and test between these origin scenarios. We find strong and robust support for a Pama–Nyungan origin in the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene, implying rapid replacement of non-Pama–Nyungan languages. Concomitant changes in the archaeological record, together with a lack of strong genetic evidence for Holocene population expansion, suggests that Pama–Nyungan languages were carried as part of an expanding package of cultural innovations that probably facilitated the absorption and assimilation of existing hunter-gatherer groups.A Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of vocabulary from 306 Pama–Nyungan languages suggests that the language family rose to dominance across Australia in a process of rapid replacement following an origin in the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene.

[1]  M. Pagel,et al.  Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history , 2007, Nature.

[2]  J. Diamond,et al.  Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions , 2003, Science.

[3]  B. Joseph,et al.  Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics , 1996 .

[4]  R. M. W. Dixon.  The Rise and Fall of Languages by R. M. W. Dixon , 1997 .

[5]  R. Gray,et al.  Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin , 2003, Nature.

[6]  P. Veth.  Origins of the Western Desert language: convergence in linguistic and archaeological space and time models , 2000 .

[7]  L. Cavalli-Sforza,et al.  Demic expansions and human evolution , 1993, Science.

[8]  Claire Bowern,et al.  Chirila: Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia , 2016 .

[9]  C. F. Voegelin,et al.  LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD--INDO-PACIFIC FASCICLE FIVE. , 1964 .

[10]  I. McNiven,et al.  Darumbal voyaging: intensifying use of central Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay islands over the past 5000 years , 2014 .

[11]  R. Walker,et al.  Bayesian phylogeography of the Arawak expansion in lowland South America , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[12]  Peter Bellwood.  First Migrants: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective , 2013 .

[13]  H. Kishino,et al.  Dating of the human-ape splitting by a molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA , 2005, Journal of Molecular Evolution.

[14]  P. McConvell,et al.  Archaeology and linguistics : aboriginal Australia in global perspective , 1997 .

[15]  M. Pagel,et al.  Bantu expansion shows that habitat alters the route and pace of human dispersals , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[16]  Harold Koch,et al.  The Languages and Linguistics of Australia A Comprehensive Guide , 2014 .

[17]  G. Nicholls,et al.  FROM WORDS TO DATES: WATER INTO WINE, MATHEMAGIC OR PHYLOGENETIC INFERENCE? , 2005 .

[18]  Daniel L. Ayres,et al.  BEAGLE: An Application Programming Interface and High-Performance Computing Library for Statistical Phylogenetics , 2011, Systematic biology.

[19]  Jeff Good,et al.  Languoid, Doculect and Glossonym: Formalizing the Notion 'Language' , 2013 .

[20]  Alan N. Williams,et al.  Human refugia in Australia during the Last Glacial Maximum and Terminal Pleistocene: a geospatial analysis of the 25–12 ka Australian archaeological record , 2013 .

[21]  R. J. Mitchell,et al.  Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia , 2017, Nature.

[22]  Peter Hiscock,et al.  Archaeology of Ancient Australia , 2007 .

[23]  Patrick McConvell,et al.  The Prehistory and Internal Relationships of Australian Languages , 2011, Lang. Linguistics Compass.

[24]  R. M. W. Dixon,et al.  The rise and fall of languages , 1997 .

[25]  R. Blench,et al.  Archaeology and Language II : Archaeological Data and Linguistic Hypotheses , 1998 .

[26]  Knut Bergsland,et al.  On the Validity of Glottochronology , 1962, Current Anthropology.

[27]  T. Hasegawa,et al.  Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[28]  William J. Stewart,et al.  Introduction to the numerical solution of Markov Chains , 1994 .

[29]  Alice A. Lin,et al.  Revealing the prehistoric settlement of Australia by Y chromosome and mtDNA analysis , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[30]  Shane A. McCarthy,et al.  Deep Roots for Aboriginal Australian Y Chromosomes , 2016, Current Biology.

[31]  M. Steel,et al.  Modeling the covarion hypothesis of nucleotide substitution. , 1998, Mathematical biosciences.

[32]  Dong Xie,et al.  BEAST 2: A Software Platform for Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis , 2014, PLoS Comput. Biol..

[33]  Toshikazu Hasegawa,et al.  Evolution of the Ainu Language in Space and Time , 2013, PloS one.

[34]  Claire Bowern,et al.  Computational phylogenetics and the internal structure of Pama-Nyungan , 2012 .

[35]  Simon J. Greenhill,et al.  Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family , 2012, Science.

[36]  Claire Bowern.  Another Look at Australia as a Linguistic Area , 2006 .

[37]  Mike Smith.  The antiquity of seedgrinding in arid Australia , 1986 .

[38]  F. Ayala,et al.  Gene–Culture Coevolution in the Age of Genomics , 2010 .

[39]  P. Hiscock.  Pattern and Context in the Holocene Proliferation of Backed Artifacts in Australia , 2008 .

[40]  Nicholas Evans,et al.  Australian Languages Reconsidered: A Review of Dixon (2002) , 2005 .

[41]  P. Underhill,et al.  Independent histories of human Y chromosomes from Melanesia and Australia. , 2001, American journal of human genetics.

[42]  B. David,et al.  Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory , 1990, Antiquity.

[43]  Wai Lok Sibon Li,et al.  Accurate model selection of relaxed molecular clocks in bayesian phylogenetics. , 2012, Molecular biology and evolution.

[44]  S. Bonhoeffer,et al.  Birth–death skyline plot reveals temporal changes of epidemic spread in HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[45]  S. Ho,et al.  Relaxed Phylogenetics and Dating with Confidence , 2006, PLoS biology.

[46]  S. Haberle,et al.  Climates of change: human dimensions of Holocene environmental change in low latitudes of the PEPII transect , 2004 .

[47]  Gentry White,et al.  Holocene Demographic Changes and the Emergence of Complex Societies in Prehistoric Australia , 2015, PloS one.

[48]  Chundra Cathcart,et al.  Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis , 2015 .

[49]  Christopher Ehret,et al.  Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[50]  Harold Koch,et al.  Australian languages : classification and the comparative method , 2004 .

[51]  Remco Bouckaert,et al.  Phylogeography by diffusion on a sphere: whole world phylogeography , 2016, PeerJ.

[52]  P. Visscher,et al.  Whole-genome genetic diversity in a sample of Australians with deep Aboriginal ancestry. , 2010, American journal of human genetics.

[53]  M. Hammer,et al.  Gene Flow from the Indian Subcontinent to Australia Evidence from the Y Chromosome , 2002, Current Biology.

[54]  M. Clendon.  Reassessing Australia’s Linguistic Prehistory , 2006, Current Anthropology.

[55]  Christopher J. Lee,et al.  Wagner and Dollo: a stochastic duet by composing two parsimonious solos. , 2008, Systematic biology.

[56]  M. Stoneking,et al.  Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to Australia , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[57]  Patience Epps,et al.  Does Lateral Transmission Obscure Inheritance in Hunter-Gatherer Languages? , 2011, PloS one.

[58]  Simon J. Greenhill,et al.  Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement , 2009, Science.

[59]  Ziheng Yang.  Maximum likelihood phylogenetic estimation from DNA sequences with variable rates over sites: Approximate methods , 1994, Journal of Molecular Evolution.

[60]  H. Lourandos.  Intensification: a Late Pleistocene-Holocene archaeological sequence from Southwestern Victoria , 1983 .

[61]  Simon J. Greenhill,et al.  Does horizontal transmission invalidate cultural phylogenies? , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[62]  Nicholas Evans,et al.  The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia : comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region , 2003 .

[63]  Geoff K. Nicholls,et al.  Dated ancestral trees from binary trait data and their application to the diversification of languages , 2007, 0711.1874.

[64]  R. Dixon.  The rise and fall of languages , 1997 .

[65]  M. Suchard,et al.  Phylogeography takes a relaxed random walk in continuous space and time. , 2010, Molecular biology and evolution.

[66]  P. Veth.  Islands in the interior: a model for the colonization of Australia's arid zone , 1989 .

[67]  Søren Brunak,et al.  A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia , 2016, Nature.

[68]  Tanja Gernhard,et al.  The conditioned reconstructed process. , 2008, Journal of theoretical biology.

[69]  Harry Lourandos,et al.  Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory , 1997 .

[70]  P. McConvell.  Backtracking to Babel : the chronology of Pama-Nyungan expansion in Australia. by Patrick McConvell , 1996 .