News 2017

DNA analysis of present-day populations in the Chachapoyas region of Peru indicates that the original inhabitants were not uprooted en masse by the Inca Empire’s expansion into this area hundreds of years ago. more

Miriam Haidle presenting her keynote "Entering new rooms - multidimensional development in cultural evolution" at the CESC 2017 more

Cecilia Heyes presenting her keynote "Enquire within cultural evolution and cognitive science" at the CESC 2017 more

Juliane Bräuer and Russell Gray discuss Dr. Bräuer's recent paper comparing wolf and dog cognition with MDR Thüringen Journal. The study showed that dogs seem to have lost some problem solving abilities during domestication. more

A large-scale study of Pacific languages reveals that forces driving grammatical change are different to those driving lexical change. Grammar changes more rapidly and is especially influenced by contact with unrelated languages, while words are more resistant to change. more

Adam Powel's project will build the tools necessary to establish gene-culture coevolution in the genomic-era. more

Study conducted at the Wolf Science Center in Vienna shows that dogs seem to have lost some problem solving abilities when they were domesticated. more

The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History welcomes 300 participants from around the globe to Jena to introduce a unique forum for evolutionary research: the Cultural Evolution Society. The Society’s inaugural conference takes place from September 13^th to 15^th and is organized by the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution. more

Around 7000 languages are spoken worldwide. Why do humans speak so many languages? Johann-Mattis List speaks with Deutschlandfunk Nova. more

Members of the DLCE (Cormac Anderson, Johann-Mattis List, Paul Heggarty) in collaboration with the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (represented by Prof. Adrian Simpson) are organising a thematic session at the Poznań Linguistic Meeting in Poznań, Poland on 18 September with the title Phonological representation in the quantitative era of comparative linguistics". more

The DLCE (represented by Simon Greenhill and Johann-Mattis List) organises a panel on the German Day of Oriental Studies which will take place in Jena this year (September 18-22). On September 21, from 9am to 1pm scientists from the institute and external guests will share and discuss their thoughts on the topic "Languages as keys to our past". more

Creole languages shed light on the robustness of language transmission. more

In an article published on July 24 by Russell Gray and Joseph Watts in PNAS they outline how advances in computational methods and large cross-cultural datasets are beginning to reveal the broad patterns and processes underlying our cultural histories. more

DLCE research associate Michael Gavin writes in The Conversation about a new model that explores processes that may have shaped Australia's language diversity. July 16, 2017.

Further media coverage:
Why Are There So Many Different Languages in the World?
Newsweek, 17.07.2017
Why Do Human Beings Speak So Many Languages?
Scientific American, 17.08.2017
Why Do We Speak So Many Languages?
Radio Interview, WYPR, 15.08.2017
Hallo! Hello! ¡Hola! - Warum sprechen Menschen so viele Sprachen? (interview with Johann-Mattis List)
Deutschlandfunk Nova, 10.09.2017 more

Invited speakers:
John Peterson (University of Kiel),
Sarah Thomason (University of Michigan),
Lars Johanson (University of Mainz) more

"Religious Control of Sexuality Increases Paternity Certainty: A longterm study of the Dogon of Mali" more

A new genomic study reveals a genetic continuity and adds new aspects to the debatte of the diffusion of the indo-european languages. more

Scientists at the MPI-SHH and MPI-EVAN compare the cooperation behavior of wolves and dogs more

May 8 to May 14, 2017
QMSS provides intensive training in quantitative methods for the study of linguistic and cultural evolution. more

Latest study reveals 89% success-rate of computational detection of word relationships across language families more