num_pages: 520
description: Linguistic diversity is one of the most puzzling and challenging features of humankind. Why are there some 6000 different languages spoken in the world? Why are some, like Chinese or English, spoken by millions over vast territories, while others are restricted to just a few thousand speakers in a limited area? The farming/language dispersal hypothesis makes the radical and controversial proposal that the present-day distributions of many of the world's languages and language families can be traced back to early developments in farming and their dispersal from the several nuclear areas where animal and plant domestication emerged.
language: English
title: Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis
titlecomplete: Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (McDonald Institute Monographs)
ratings_count: 2
publisher: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research