The Sino-Tibetan language family includes early literary languages, such as Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese, and is represented by more than 400 modern languages spoken in China, India, Burma, and Nepal. It is one of the most diverse language families in the world, spoken by 1.4 billion speakers. Although the language family has been studied since the beginning of the 19th century, scholars' knowledge of the origin of these languages is still severely limited. An interdisciplinary study published in PNAS, led by scientists of the Centre des Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale (Paris), the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena), and the Centre de Recherches en Mathématiques de la Décision (Paris), now sheds new light on the place and date of the origin of these languages. Based on a phylogenetic study of 50 ancient and modern Sino-Tibetan languages, the scholars conclude that the Sino-Tibetan languages originated among millet farmers, located in North China, around 7,200 years ago.
* This article was originally published here
Monday, 6 May 2019
Harnessing sunlight to pull hydrogen from wastewater
Hydrogen is a critical component in the manufacture of thousands of common products from plastic to fertilizers, but producing pure hydrogen is expensive and energy intensive. Now, a research team at Princeton University has harnessed sunlight to isolate hydrogen from industrial wastewater.
* This article was originally published here
* This article was originally published here
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