ORIGINS OF INDO-EUROPEANS AND THE SPREAD OF AGRICULTURE IN EUROPE - COMPARISON OF LEXICOSTATISTICAL AND GENETIC-EVIDENCE

A series of tests was undertaken to relate lexicostatistical dissimila rities (LAN) among 48 Indo-European languages to distances representin g various causal hypotheses. The comparison is limited to languages cu rrently spoken in Europe. The putative causal distance matrices includ e (1) geographic (GEO) distances between the languages, (2) distances representing the origin of agriculture (OOA), (3) distances representi ng a model postulated by C. Renfrew (REN) concerning transformations t hat gave rise to the major Indo-European language families in Europe, and (4) distances representing a competing hypothesis by M. Gimbutas ( GIM) concerning the origin and spread of Indo-European languages in Eu rope. Pairwise Mantel tests of the matrices show that OOA correlates b etter with LAN than does REN, supporting Renfrew's basic hypothesis of the dispersal of the Indo-European languages with the spread of agric ulture but showing less effect for his postulated transformations. Par tial correlation of LAN with OOA when GEO is held constant is signific ant at p = 0.004, whereas REN is no longer correlated with LAN when GE O is held constant. When repeated for only seven languages chosen to r epresent the seven major families of Indo-European languages currently spoken in Europe, the results differed appreciably, yielding a negati ve, albeit nonsignificant, partial correlation between OOA and LAN whe n GEO is held constant. This apparent contradiction led us to develop some new statistical approaches to examine, confirm, and explain the p atterns. Decomposing the Mantel correlation coefficients for the 48 In do-European languages into several additive correlation components sho wed that much of the positive component of the correlation coefficient was contributed by LAN,OOA correlation within language families, part icularly within the Germanic family, covering up the negative contribu tions between language families. The differentiation of the seven majo r Indo-European language branches in Europe seems unrelated to the tim es of the origin of agriculture. This finding fails to support the fun damental assumption of Renfrew's hypothesis. There are also no signifi cant correlations between LAN and REN or GIM. A series of Monte Carlo experiments confirmed these findings. Consideration of the accumulated evidence from genetics supports the model of demic diffusion during t he origin of agriculture. However, published genetic studies and the p resent study lend no support to the notion that the early farmers were indeed the Indo-Europeans.