Linguists traced humanity's largest ocean migration using nothing but word lists

By comparing vocabulary and sound changes across the roughly 1,200 Austronesian languages spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island, linguist Robert Blust reconstructed a family tree showing the languages fanning out from Taiwan roughly 5,000 years ago. The linguistic pattern matches archaeological and genetic evidence for one of the greatest maritime migrations in human prehistory, as Austronesian-speaking peoples island-hopped across the Pacific and Indian Oceans over thousands of years.

— Robert Blust, The Austronesian Languages — 2013
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