Study Offers New View of Language Ties Across Bering Strait
For full Georgetown University Press Release
MARCH 13, 2014 – A PLOS-ONE STUDY PUBLISHED today by a Georgetown professor shows that people in ancient times may have migrated back to central Asia from the Bering Land Bridge around the same time people were migrating into North America.
Previous research on a language family known as the Dene-Yeniseian has suggested there are common language elements between the North American Na-Dene languages and the Yeniseian languages of Central Siberia.
To examine the relationship more closely, Mark Sicoli, Georgetown College assistant professor of linguistics, and Gary Holton of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, used a technique called phylogenetic analysis, originally developed to investigate evolutionary relationships between biological species.
The research was featured in a New York Times article yesterday.