17 June 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

A new study says genes and languages aren’t always together

Over 7,000 languages are spoken around the world. This linguistic diversity, like biological traits, is passed down from generation to generation. But, as Charles Darwin originally proposed, have language and genes evolved in tandem over the last few thousand years? An interdisciplinary team from the University of Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) has now investigated this question on a global scale.

The researchers put together a global database linking linguistic and genetic data entitled GeLaTo (Genes and Languages Together), which contains genetic information from some 4,000 individuals speaking 295 languages and representing 397 genetic populations.

One in five gene-language links point to language shifts

In their study, the researchers examined the extent to which the linguistic and genetic histories of populations coincided. People who speak related languages tend to also be genetically related, but this isn’t always the case. “We focused on cases where the biological and linguistic patterns differed and investigated how often and where these mismatches occur,” says Chiara Barbieri, UZH geneticist who led the study and initiated it together with colleagues when she was a postdoc at the Max-Planck-Institute.

The researchers found that about every fifth gene-language relation is a mismatch, and they occurr worldwide. These mismatches can provide insights into the history of human evolution. “Once we know where such language shifts happened, we can better reconstruct how languages and populations spread across the world,” says Balthasar Bickel, director of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language, who co-supervised the study.

Language family comparisons.

Switching to the local lingo

Most mismatches result from populations shifting to the language of a neighboring population that is genetically different. Some peoples on the tropical eastern slopes of the Andes speak a Quechua idiom that is typically spoken by groups with a different genetic profile who live at higher altitudes. The Damara people in Namibia, who are genetically related to the Bantu, communicate using a Khoe language that is spoken by genetically distant groups in the same area. And some hunter-gatherers who live in Central Africa speak predominantly Bantu languages without a strong genetic relatedness to the neighboring Bantu populations.

In addition, there are cases where migrants have picked up the local language of their new homes. The Jewish population in Georgia, for example, adopted a South Caucasian language, while the Cochin Jews in India speak a Dravidian language. The case of Malta reflects its history as an island between two continents: while the Maltese are closely related to the people of Sicily, they speak an Afroasiatic language that is influenced by various Turkish and Indo-European languages.

Preserving their linguistic identity

“It appears that giving up your language isn’t that difficult, also for practical reasons,” says the last author Kentaro Shimizu, director of the URPP Evolution in Action: From Genomes to Ecosystems. However, it’s more rare for people to preserve their original linguistic identity despite genetic assimilation with their neighbors. “Hungarian people, for example, are genetically similar to their neighbors, but their language is related to languages spoken in Siberia.”

This makes Hungarian speakers stand out from among the rest of Europe and parts of Asia, where most people speak Indo-European languages, such as French, German, Hindi, Farsi, Greek and many others. Indo-European has not only been extensively studied, but also scores particularly high in terms of genetic and linguistic congruence. “This might have given the impression that gene-language matches are the norm, but our study shows that this isn’t the case,” concludes Chiara Barbieri, who adds that it is important to include genetic and linguistic data from populations all over the world to understand language evolution.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

10.1073/pnas.2122084119 

Cover Photo: Overview of linguistic and genetic similarity.

Related Articles

Bronze Age Wedge Tomb Discovered on the Dingle Peninsula maybe Even Older

22 April 2021

22 April 2021

A wedge tomb recently discovered on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland was described by archaeologists as “quite unusual”. Wedge tombs...

5,000-year-old Settlement Unearthed in Al Mudhaibi, Oman

3 January 2023

3 January 2023

The Oman News Agency announced that a 5,000-year-old settlement was discovered during archaeological excavations at the Al Gharyein archaeological site...

Magical Roman Phallus Wind Chime Unearthed in Serbia

15 November 2023

15 November 2023

Archaeologists have unearthed a Roman phallus wind chime known as a tintinnabulum, during excavations at the ancient city of Viminacium...

Hidden Royal Trove of rulers of Poland and Lithuania discovered in the underground vaults of Vilnius Cathedral in Lithuania

17 January 2025

17 January 2025

A unique find was made in the dungeons of the Vilnius Cathedral: The royal funerals of the Polish and Lithuanian...

A pendant made of mammoth bone with ‘mysterious dots’ could be the oldest known example of ornate jewelry in Eurasia

26 November 2021

26 November 2021

The fragments of an ancient pendant made of mammoth ivory were unearthed in Poland, and are regarded to be the...

An 8500-year-old wooden ladder remain was discovered at Çatalhöyük

12 April 2022

12 April 2022

Remains of the wooden ladder were discovered for the first time in Çatalhöyük, one of the best-preserved Neolithic settlements in...

An archaeological dig at Govan Old Churchyard revealed a remarkable new find: an early medieval ‘Govan Warrior’ stone

19 September 2023

19 September 2023

An archaeological excavation in the churchyard at Govan Old Parish Church in Glasgow, a port city on the River Clyde...

A rare statue of K’awiil, Mayan god of Lighting have uncovered in Mexico

1 May 2023

1 May 2023

In southeastern Mexico, archaeologists uncovered a rare sculpture of a powerful Mayan god near the path of a large-scale rail...

New finds in ancient Rome’s Pompeii show ‘conditions of precarity and poor hygiene, in which people of lower status lived during that time

20 August 2023

20 August 2023

Archaeologists have discovered a small bedroom in Civita Giuliana villa near Pompeii that was almost certainly used by slaves, throwing...

Unexpected Results Of Ancient DNA Study: Analysis sheds light on the early peopling of South America

3 November 2022

3 November 2022

Around 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa and quickly spread across six continents. Researchers can trace this epic migration...

Researchers Make Distilled Wine in a Replica of a 2,000-year-old Bronze Vessel Found in the Emperor’s Tomb

1 January 2025

1 January 2025

Archaeologists in China have produced distilled wine in a replica of a 2,000-year-old bronze vessel recovered from an emperor’s tomb,...

Archaeologists may have found the lost 2,000-year-old ancient city of Bassania in Albania

19 June 2022

19 June 2022

Polish archaeologists may have discovered the 2,000-year-old lost city of Bassania in Albania. The remains of two large ancient stone...

Central Turkey’s largest Byzantine mosaic structure found

28 October 2021

28 October 2021

A 300-square-meter (3,330 square feet) ​floor mosaic belonging to the Late Roman-Early Byzantine period was discovered during excavation work in...

Iznik Archaeology Museum reveals 2,500-year-old love letter

16 January 2023

16 January 2023

İznik is an ancient habitation that hosts various civilizations due to its fertile lands, trade routes, and many other reasons....

A mysterious lead tablet with an unknown 13th-14th-century script: Might be an old Lithuanian script?

26 February 2024

26 February 2024

In the Museum of the Palace of the Grand Dukes in Vilnius, Lithuania, a mysterious lead tablet dating back to...