Most Australian Indigenous languages came from just one place, research claims

Burketown, Queensland, named as origin of dominant Pama-Nyungan family of languages
Helen Davidson

@heldavidson
Tue 13 Mar 2018 23.24 EDT

Most Indigenous languages in Australia likely originated from a remote spot in far north Queensland as recently as 4,000 years ago, before slowly spreading across the country, a new study has claimed.

The paper, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, mapped the origins of the Pama-Nyungan family of languages, which encompasses about 90% of the continent. It traced the dominant family of languages back to an area near an isolated place known today as Burketown.

“All the languages from the Torres Strait to Bunbury, from the Pilbara to the Grampians, are descended from a single ancestor language that spread across the continent to all but the Kimberley and the Top End,” wrote co-author Claire Bowern, professor of linguistics at Yale University. “Where this language came from, how old it is, and how it spread, has been something of a puzzle.”

The researchers, from Yale and the University of Auckland, tested several theories to explain the spread of language across time and space, ranging from 4,000 years ago – the “rapid replacement hypothesis” – to more than 50,000 years ago with the initial colonisation of the continent from the north.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/14/most-australian-indigenous-languages-came-from-just-one-place-research-claims