Outline
According to Merritt Ruhlen, "In 1971 Greenberg presented evidence that the non-Austronesian languages of New Guinea – as well as certain languages on islands to the east and west of New Guinea – belong to an extremely diverse and ancient family that he named Indo-Pacific." In Ruhlen's view, Indo-Pacific is clearly much more ancient than Austronesian, which reflects a migration from southeast Asia that began only 6 000 years ago; he notes that New Guinea was inhabited by modern humans at least 40 000 years ago, and possibly 10 000 to 15 000 years earlier than that. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza describes Indo-Pacific as a very heterogenous family of 700 languages and suggests that it may be more than 40 000 years old.
Ruhlen has attempted to broadly outline the history of the migrations that he believes produced Indo-Pacific and the world's other language families. Modern humans would have had a homeland in Africa. Shortly after 100 0000 BP (before the present) a group of modern humans migrated out of Africa, spreading first to the Near East, then beyond to Southeast Asia and Oceania. The first of these migrations separated sub-Saharan Africans from all other humans, while the second led to the populations of Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. The Indo-Pacific family, like the indigenous Australian languages, would have had its origins in the second of these two early divisions in the human family tree.
Read more about this topic: Indo-Pacific Languages
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