Coevolution of genes and languages revisited

The comparison of an evolutionary tree of a set of global human populations constructed from genetic data to a linguistic classification tree shows sufficient similarities to suggest the coevolution of languages and genes. However, this apparent correlation must be supported by statistical tests. The Monte Carlo approach was used to test the correlation between linguistic and genetic evolutionary history. The results showed that the correlation between the two histories are stronger than 10(super -3), suggesting a signifiant relationship. Possible explanations for the coevolution of genetic and cultural characters are discussed.