Human Genetic Diversity across Languages and Cultures

We investigate the dynamics of human migration and contact and how they impacted our genetic, linguistic and cultural diversity. We use population genetics methods to disentangle patterns of relatedness between human groups, and we integrate genetic results with qualitative and quantitative data from linguistics and evolutionary anthropology.
 
Our database GeLaTo (Genes and Languages Together) is a new resource developed to link genomic data to cultural and linguistic identifiers and promote multidisciplinary research.
 
We dedicate a specific focus to South America, a region of rich linguistic and cultural diversity. Here we analyze human trajectories over different ecogeographic domains and major language families, and we confront them with cultural changes (e.g. changes in mobility and subsistence).

Head of group: Dr. Chiara Barbieri

Research themes

• Reconstructing the human past with a multidisciplinary approach
• Matches and mismatches between global genetic and linguistic diversity
• Migration routes and cultural diversity in South America
• Demographic contacts behind the spread of the Quechua language family