Tian, Zheng, Yuxin Tao, Kongyang Zhu, Guillaume Jacques, Robin J. Ryder, José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente, Anton Antonov, Ziyang Xia, Yuxuan Zhang, Xiaoyan Ji, Xiaoying Ren, Guanglin He, Jianxin Guo, Rui Wang, Xiaomin Yang, Jing Zhao, Dan Xu, Russell D. Gray, Menghan Zhang, Shaoqing Wen, Chuan-Chao Wang & Thomas Pellard. 2022. Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative. Submitted. 11. doi: 10.1101/2022.06.09.495471. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
@article{651839, author = {Zheng Tian and Yuxin Tao and Kongyang Zhu and Guillaume Jacques and Robin J. Ryder and José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente and Anton Antonov and Ziyang Xia and Yuxuan Zhang and Xiaoyan Ji and Xiaoying Ren and Guanglin He and Jianxin Guo and Rui Wang and Xiaomin Yang and Jing Zhao and Dan Xu and Russell D. Gray and Menghan Zhang and Shaoqing Wen and Chuan-Chao Wang and Thomas Pellard}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/12/2022.06.09.495471.full.pdf}, journal = {Submitted}, pages = {11}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, title = {Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative}, url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/12/2022.06.09.495471}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Robbeets et al.1 argue that the dispersal of the so-called {\textquotedblleft}Transeurasian{\textquotedblright} languages, a highly disputed language superfamily comprising the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic language families, was driven by Neolithic farmers in the West Liao River region of China. They adduce evidence from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to support their claim. An admirable feature of the Robbeets et al.{\textquoteright}s paper is that all their datasets can be accessed. However, a closer investigation of all three types of evidence reveals fundamental problems with each of them. Robbeets et al.{\textquoteright}s analysis of the linguistic data does not conform to the minimal standards required by traditional scholarship in historical linguistics and contradicts their own stated sound correspondence principles. A reanalysis of the genetic data finds that they do not conclusively support the farming-driven dispersal of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, nor the two-wave spread of farming to Korea. Their archaeological data contain little phylogenetic signal, and we failed to reproduce the results supporting their core hypotheses about migrations.Given the severe problems we identify in all three parts of the {\textquotedblleft}triangulation{\textquotedblright} process, we conclude that there is neither conclusive evidence for a Transeurasian language family nor for associating the five different language families with the spread of Neolithic farmers from the West Liao River region.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.}, bestfn = {eurasia\tian_triangulation2022.pdf}, besttxt = {ptxt2\eurasia\tian_triangulation2022.txt}, citekeys = {cldf11:tian22transeurasian}, doi = {10.1101/2022.06.09.495471}, elocation-id = {2022.06.09.495471}, fn = {eurasia\tian_triangulation2022.pdf}, hhtype = {comparative}, inlg = {English [eng]}, isreferencedby = {cldf11}, macro_area = {Eurasia}, src = {cldf, evobib, hh} }