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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

Sandra Oliveira @sandra-oliveira.bsky.social · 2d

We have a few remaining seats left in the “Programming for Evolutionary Biologists” course - 10th edition, Berlin, Feb 17 to Mar 6
evop.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de

A highly motivated and experienced team is waiting for you with an updated curriculum!

Programming for Evolutionary Biology School (EVOP) | February 18th – March 5th 2026

evop.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · 28d

"DNA tells story of language
Methodologically, the study’s move is elegant. Historical documents can be rich but patchy, and for many regions and eras they simply don’t exist.
Genes keep a different kind of ledger. When populations intermix, they leave an imprint that persists for thousands years."

Our DNA holds the hidden history of human language

New research reveals how human DNA preserves the story of language contact, showing when and where languages converged, diverged, and evolved.

www.earth.com

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 30

our study has implication to understand language evolution, language acquisition, social dynamics in cultural evolution, and how in time of globalization extreme contact is eroding deeper layers of linguistic diversity. thx to @nccrlanguage.bsky.social

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 30

Some features are preferentially borrowed between languages under contact, while a minority of features preferentially diverge. In contact within the same macro geographic region, prosody is a feature that preferentially diverges: a signal of distinction and identity marking!

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 30

... as we are using genetics as an independent source to spot instances of contact between populations that speak unrelated languages. The ADMIXTURE runs from K=2 to K=30 on a global set of 4768 individuals in 558 populations associated with 373 languages is already an interesting result itself!

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 30

A very special paper where we did something NEW! 🔥combining a large genetic dataset 🧬, a large linguistic dataset 💬, and Bayesian multilevel logistic regressions 📈, counting the effects of areal contact (geographic constrains) 🌎. Genetic admixture explains higher levels of linguistic exchanges...

Anna Graff @annagraff.bsky.social · Aug 30

Our paper is out! We linked genetic and linguistic data to study how contact changes language and found consistent patterns of borrowing across contact situations
@balthasarbickel.bsky.social @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social @nccrlanguage.bsky.social @isle-uzh.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adv7521

Patterns of genetic admixture reveal similar rates of borrowing across diverse scenarios of language contact

Human population contact leads to consistently similar rates of linguistic borrowing, but effects vary across linguistic features.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Aug 29

📰When populations meet, they exchange genes, but also language features. According to a new study by NCCR researchers, contact between human populations increases the resemblance between their languages to similar extents all over the world, but differently.

evolvinglanguage.ch/capturing-la...

Capturing language change through the genes - NCCR Evolving Language

When populations meet, they typically exchange genes. Their languages meet too, and such encounters can change languages. But how much do languages actually change through contact, and do these change...

evolvinglanguage.ch

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 27

New paper! ⚡ With Gabriel Aguirre and Marcelo Sánchez, looking at patterns of blowgun types and use across societies of the world. We find areal patterns, similarities mediated by cultural connections, and specific types characterizing distinct branches of the Austronesian language tree. 🎯

A global database on blowguns with links to geography and language | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

A global database on blowguns with links to geography and language - Volume 7

www.cambridge.org

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 18

@annagraff.bsky.social presenting our work on effects of isolation and contact in linguistic diversity - with a peak from population genetics! #ichl27

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 16

"Outsourcing thought: why writing must remain central to human knowledge in Higher Education". Thinking of our role at University in the age of AI - by Giorgio Iemmolo. "Protect writing as the space where knowledge emerges" osf.io/preprints/so...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

Kevin Lala @kevinlala.bsky.social · Aug 13

I'm pleased to share this new article by @svenkasser.bsky.social, Laura Fortunato @anthrolog.bsky.social, Marc Feldman and myself.

The article extends gene-culture coevolution to recognize evolutionary effects of culture arising through drift and migration.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Aug 5

Some facts about biological sex, genetic sex, and why it is not so clear cut as people think:

World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990

World Athletics says its genetic test for women ensures ‘the integrity of women’s sport’ – but science does not support this overly simplistic idea.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

Home – Pikaia @pikaia.eu.web.brid.gy · Jul 31

Una storia riscritta nel genoma: la costa nord del Perù e le sue antiche civiltà

La costa settentrionale del Perù è una regione nota per il suo ricco patrimonio archeologico, ma la storia della sua popolazione è ancora poco esplorata. Un team internazionale di genetisti e linguisti ha indagato sulle radici genetiche millenarie e sulla continuità storica della regione, in un nuovo studio pubblicato su Scientific Reports di Redazione

pikaia.eu

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

Here the link to the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... . The project started in 2015 with the support of @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social, and developed with the support of @nccrlanguage.bsky.social

Human population history on the North Coast of peru from Y chromosomes and mitogenomes - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Human population history on the North Coast of peru from Y chromosomes and mitogenomes

www.nature.com

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

...The North Coast of Peru is an ancient center of development which saw the rise of some of the first complex societies in the continent, while the popular Tiwanako and Inca cultures followed later in the southern highlands. The archaeology and cultural heritage of this region is stunning! ...

Chiara Barbieri at the archaeological site of El Brujo, Peru

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

... and with an international team of geneticists to reconstruct the mtDNA and Y chromosome genealogies. Uniparental markers are still very useful, as ancient and modern comparative data for the region is available...

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

...while other genetic profiles are related to Peruvian and Ecuadorian groups. We also find a local signal of structure that match with linguistic and cultural boundaries already present at the time of the Moche empire. We worked with Matthias Urban for linguistic contextualization...

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

New paper on the genetic legacy of living inhabitants of the Northern Coast of Peru. With Ricardo Fujita and José Sandoval of USMP Lima,master student Lea Huber,@epifaniaarango.bsky.social,@kkshimizu1.bsky.social Genetic lineages characteristic of the region link to aDNA from local archaeo sites...

Peru's Hidden Genetic Legacy links to Ancient Moche Populations - NCCR Evolving Language

The northern coast of Peru is a region known for its rich archaeological heritage, but its people’s history is still underexplored. An international team of geneticists and linguists investigated the ...

evolvinglanguage.ch

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 29

Feels like time travelling. Science and art reconstruct the life of our ancestors

See the Face of a 10,500-Year-Old Woman, Reconstructed by Archaeologists and Artists

Using well-preserved ancient DNA, researchers have created a life-like facial reconstruction of a woman who lived in Belgium's Meuse Valley during the Mesolithic period

www.smithsonianmag.com

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 23

Here with Matthias Urban and Kurt Rademaker we cover the major linguistic, archaeological and genetic structural patterns of the Andes, focusing on interesting case studies where the disciplines tell us a coherent history.

Archaeolinguistics of the languages of the Andes

AbstractThis chapter discusses aspects of the prehistoric language dynamics of the Andes of South America. Featuring more than one hundred languages that b

academic.oup.com

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 23

Here with Paul Widmer we provide a review of how modern and ancient DNA data have been expanding our knowledge of human history, and which demographic scenarios can be meaningful for linguistic reconstructions. I recommend the read to linguists that want to expand on the field of genetics!

Advances in population genetics and language history: How large data sets and ancient DNA changed the picture

AbstractSince the development of genetic analysis for the study of population history, the discipline has been paired with linguistics to compare human dem

academic.oup.com

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 23

New volume on the interface between languages, human history, anthropology, archaeology and (a bit of) genetics, curated by M. Robbeets and M. Hudson. A very rich table of content for everyone interested in these multidisciplinary studies of the human past. I contributed two chapters:

The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language

Abstract. Linguists have long described their findings in an archaeological context, while archaeologists have been interested in what language can tell th

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

Tábita Hünemeier @hunemeier.bsky.social · May 15

Our new paper is out in @science.org! By exploring the rich genetic diversity of Brazil, we show how fine-scale genomic analyses reveal that this diversity, rooted in Indigenous ancestry and centuries of complex demographic history, plays a key role in population health.

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Apr 28

SIBE Summer School: evolution of populations at a scale. Ferrara 7-11 September. Application deadline 11 May. Travel grants available. A very nice format to learn about population genetics, conservation genomics, grant application, outreach, and networking. See you in Ferrara!

SIBE summer school

SIBE SUMMER SCHOOL 2025 7th − 11th September 2025 FERRARA (ITALY) Overview The analysis of genomic data has become increasingly feasible, even in non-model organisms, thanks to the “omics” revolution...

sites.google.com

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Reposted by Chiara Barbieri

Sam Passmore @sampassmore.bsky.social · Apr 10

NEW PAPER: Linguistics has long debated the scientific cost of narrow sampling, but growing language endangerment makes this debate urgent. We compare studied and unstudied languages in child language acquisition to assess how narrow sampling limits our understanding
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

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