Of all of the world's families of languages, Indo-European is the most global. It comprises more than 400 languages as diverse as English, French, Persian and Hindi, which together are spoken by about 3 billion people. Its origin, however, has remained obscure. Enter Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland and colleagues, who decided to apply to languages models originally designed to trace the genetic origins of pathogens. In effect, the idea is that languages might evolve over time in a similar way to the evolution of species.
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