Languages Grew From a Seed in Africa, Study Says - NYTimes.com

Languages Grew From a Seed in Africa, Study Says - NYTimes.com You know how geneticists can figure out how long ago a mutation occurred because they think they know the "rate" at which genes change? (I don't, really, but I've heard something about it.) What if you could do something like that with language? Mathematical models show that languages have fewer phonemes the farther away they are from SW Africa--does that mean all languages originated in that area? Can this sort of analysis really be done on languages? Hmm. It would interesting if it could. See the link within this article to the original article in Science magazine.