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Published online 27 November 2003 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news031124-6

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Language tree rooted in Turkey

Evolutionary ideas give farmers credit for Indo-European tongues.

A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists reckon.

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