Russell Gray
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
phone: +49 341 3550 259
e-mail: russell_gray@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Curriculum Vitae
Russell Gray completed his Ph.D. at the University of Auckland in 1990. He spent four years lecturing at the University of Otago, New Zealand, before returning to the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and has been awarded with several fellowships, as well as the inaugural Mason Durie Medal for his pioneering contributions to social science. In 2014, he became one of the two founding directors of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, where he has been heading the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution. He also holds adjunct positions in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland and the Department of Philosophy at the Australian National University. In June 2020 Russell Gray was reappointed as a director to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
Russell Gray’s research spans the areas of cultural evolution, linguistics, animal cognition, and the philosophy of biology. He helped pioneer the application of computational evolutionary methods to questions about linguistic prehistory and cultural evolution. His work has shed new insights on the 200 year-old debate on the origin of Indo-European languages, dubbed by Diamond and Bellwood as “the most intensively studied, yet still most recalcitrant problem in historical linguistics”. In collaboration with colleagues in Europe he extended this evolutionary approach to test hypotheses about the roles of culture and cognition in constraining linguistic variation. In contrast to the claims of some generative linguists, the analyses revealed striking language family specific dependencies. His core research focuses on questions about the history of languages, cultures and people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Together with Simon Greenhill he developed a large lexical database for the languages of this region. They analysed this data using Bayesian phylogenetic methods to test hypotheses about the sequence and timing of the peopling of the Pacific. The results revealed striking patterns of expansion pulses and pauses.
This linguistic work set the stage for his recent research applying ecological and evolutionary methods to questions about the cultural evolution of religion and the development of large-scale stratified societies both in the Pacific and around the globe. This research has found that notions of god vary with ecology, that moralising gods promote the development of social complexity, and in a darker vein, that ritual human sacrifice promotes and sustains the evolution of stratified societies. He is sometimes asked if he knows the other Russell Gray who works on New Caledonian crows. “I am Russell Crow”, he responds with a grin. With his colleagues at the University of Auckland he has found that the remarkable tool manufacturing traditions of these birds are the product of a lengthy period of socially scaffolded learning, and are underpinned by brains with large associative regions and the ability to make certain kinds of causal inference. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters including nine papers in Nature and Science.
In 2014, Russell Gray spoke at the Nijmegen Lectures, an annual event that showcases the best research in linguistics worldwide. He covered a range of his studies from tool use by New Caledonian Crows to quantitative work on historical linguistics to charting the evolution of political systems.
Publications
Miller, R., Davies, J. R., Schiestl, M., Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2023). Social influences on delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and Eurasian jays. PLoS One, 18(12): e0289197. |
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Heggarty, P., Anderson, C., Scarborough, M., King, B., Bouckaert, R., Jocz, L., Kümmel, M. J., Jügel, T., Irslinger, B., Pooth, R., Liljegren, H., Strand, R. F., Haig, G., Macák, M., Kim, R. I., Anonby, E., Pronk, T., Belyaev, O., Dewey-Findell, T. K., Boutilier, M., Freiberg, C., Tegethoff, R., Serangeli, M., Liosis, N., Stroński, K., Schulte, K., Gupta, G. K., Haak, W., Krause, J., Atkinson, Q. D., Greenhill, S. J., Kühnert, D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages. Science, 381(6656): eabg0818. |
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Skirgård, H., Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D. E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J. J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Passmore, S., Chira, A.-M., Maurits, L., Dinnage, R., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Bowern, C., Epps, P., Hill, J., Vesakoski, O., Robbeets, M., Abbas, N. K., Auer, D., Bakker, N. A., Barbos, G., Borges, R. D., Danielsen, S., Dorenbusch, L., Dorn, E., Elliott, J., Falcone, G., Fischer, J., Ghanggo Ate, Y., Gibson, H., Göbel, H.-P., Goodall, J. A., Gruner, V., Harvey, A., Hayes, R., Heer, L., Herrera Miranda, R. E., Hübler, N., Huntington-Rainey, B., Ivani, J. K., Johns, M., Just, E., Kashima, E., Kipf, C., Klingenberg, J. V., König, N., Koti, A., Kowalik, R. G., Krasnoukhova, O., Lindvall, N. L., Lorenzen, M., Lutzenberger, H., Martins, T. R., Mata German, C., van der Meer, S., Montoya Samamé, J., Müller, M., Muradoglu, S., Neely, K., Nickel, J., Norvik, M., Oluoch, C. A., Peacock, J., Pearey, I. O., Peck, N., Petit, S., Pieper, S., Poblete, M., Prestipino, D., Raabe, L., Raja, A., Reimringer, J., Rey, S. C., Rizaew, J., Ruppert, E., Salmon, K., Sammet, J., Schembri, R., Schlabbach, L., Schmidt, F. W., Skilton, A., Smith, W. D., de Sousa, H., Sverredal, K., Valle, D., Vera, J., Voß, J., Witte, T., Wu, H., Yam, S., Ye, J., Yong, M., Yuditha, T., Zariquiey, R., Forkel, R., Evans, N., Levinson, S. C., Haspelmath, M., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9: eadg6175. |
Open AccessJackson, J. C., Watts, J., Henry, T. R., List, J.-M., Forkel, R., Mucha, P. J., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R. D., & Lindquist, K. A. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science, 366, 1517-1522. |
Greenhill, S. J., Wu, C.-H., Hua, X., Dunn, M., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Evolutionary dynamics of language systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(42), E8822-E8829. |
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Gray, R. D., & Watts, J. (2017). Cultural macroevolution matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(30), 7846-7852. |
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Gavin, M. C., Rangel, T. F., Bowern, C., Colwell, R. K., Kirby, K. R., Botero, C. A., Dunn, M., Dunn, R. R., McCarter, J., Coelho, M. T. P., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 26(5), 584-591. |
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2016). Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature, 532(7598): 17159, pp. 228-231. |
Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1804): 20142556. |
Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., Kirby, K. R., Bulbulia, J., Gavin, M. C., & Gray, R. D. (2014). The ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 111(47), 16784-16789. |
Bouckaert, R., Lemey, P., Dunn, M. D., Greenhill, S. J., Alekseyenko, A. V., Drummond, A. J., Gray, R. D., Suchard, M. A., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2012). Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science, 337(6097), 957-960. |
Dunne, M., Greenhill, S. J., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D. (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 473(7345), 79-82. |
Gray, R. D., Drummond, A. J., & Greenhill, S. J. (2009). Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science, 323(5913), 479-483. |
Taylor, A. H., Hunt, G. R., Holzhaider, J. C., & Gray, R. D. (2007). Spontaneous metatool use by New Caledonian crows. Current Biology, 17(17), 1504-1507. |
Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2003). Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature, 426(6965), 435-439. |
Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (1994). Developmental systems and evolutionary explanation. The Journal of Philosophy, 91(6), 277-304. |
2024
Chira, A.-M., Gray, R. D., & Botero, C. A. (2024). Geography is not destiny: A quantitative test of Diamond's axis of orientation hypothesis. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 6: e5, pp. 1-16. |
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Dunn, R. R., Kirby, k, K. R., Bowern, C., Ember, C. R., Gray, R. D., McCarter, J., Kavanagh, P. H., Trautwein, M., Nichols, L. M., Gavin, M. C., & Botero, C. (2024). Climate, climate change and the global diversity of human houses. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 6: e24, pp. 1-55. |
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King, B., Greenhill, S. J., Reid, L. A., Ross, M., Walworth, M., & Gray, R. D. (2024). Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Philippine languages supports a rapid migration of Malayo-Polynesian languages. Scientific Reports, 14(1): 14967. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Blasi, D. E., Gast, V., Skirgård, H., Gray, R. D., & Greenhill, S. J. (2024). The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific Reports, 14: 7259. |
2023
Miller, R., Davies, J. R., Schiestl, M., Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2023). Social influences on delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and Eurasian jays. PLoS One, 18(12): e0289197. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S. M., Haynie, H. J., Passmore, S., Gast, V., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., & Skirgård, H. (2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages. Science Advances, 9(33): eadf7704. |
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Heggarty, P., Anderson, C., Scarborough, M., King, B., Bouckaert, R., Jocz, L., Kümmel, M. J., Jügel, T., Irslinger, B., Pooth, R., Liljegren, H., Strand, R. F., Haig, G., Macák, M., Kim, R. I., Anonby, E., Pronk, T., Belyaev, O., Dewey-Findell, T. K., Boutilier, M., Freiberg, C., Tegethoff, R., Serangeli, M., Liosis, N., Stroński, K., Schulte, K., Gupta, G. K., Haak, W., Krause, J., Atkinson, Q. D., Greenhill, S. J., Kühnert, D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages. Science, 381(6656): eabg0818. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Gast, V., Blasi, D. E., Skirgård, H., Gray, R. D., & Greenhill, S. J. (2023). A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: The case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard, 9(s1), 155-167. |
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Skirgård, H., Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D. E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J. J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Passmore, S., Chira, A.-M., Maurits, L., Dinnage, R., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Bowern, C., Epps, P., Hill, J., Vesakoski, O., Robbeets, M., Abbas, N. K., Auer, D., Bakker, N. A., Barbos, G., Borges, R. D., Danielsen, S., Dorenbusch, L., Dorn, E., Elliott, J., Falcone, G., Fischer, J., Ghanggo Ate, Y., Gibson, H., Göbel, H.-P., Goodall, J. A., Gruner, V., Harvey, A., Hayes, R., Heer, L., Herrera Miranda, R. E., Hübler, N., Huntington-Rainey, B., Ivani, J. K., Johns, M., Just, E., Kashima, E., Kipf, C., Klingenberg, J. V., König, N., Koti, A., Kowalik, R. G., Krasnoukhova, O., Lindvall, N. L., Lorenzen, M., Lutzenberger, H., Martins, T. R., Mata German, C., van der Meer, S., Montoya Samamé, J., Müller, M., Muradoglu, S., Neely, K., Nickel, J., Norvik, M., Oluoch, C. A., Peacock, J., Pearey, I. O., Peck, N., Petit, S., Pieper, S., Poblete, M., Prestipino, D., Raabe, L., Raja, A., Reimringer, J., Rey, S. C., Rizaew, J., Ruppert, E., Salmon, K., Sammet, J., Schembri, R., Schlabbach, L., Schmidt, F. W., Skilton, A., Smith, W. D., de Sousa, H., Sverredal, K., Valle, D., Vera, J., Voß, J., Witte, T., Wu, H., Yam, S., Ye, J., Yong, M., Yuditha, T., Zariquiey, R., Forkel, R., Evans, N., Levinson, S. C., Haspelmath, M., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9: eadg6175. |
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Zariquiey, R., Vera, J., Greenhill, S. J., Valenzuela, P., Gray, R. D., & List, J.-M. (2023). Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization. Interface Focus, 13(1): 20220053. |
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Greenhill, S. J., Haynie, H. J., Ross, R. M., Chira, A.-M., List, J.-M., Campbell, L., Botero, C. A., & Gray, R. D. (2023). A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family. Language, 99(1), 81-107. |
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Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D., Skirgård, H., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank’s typological advances support computational research on diverse languages. In L. Beinborn, K. Goswami, S. Muradoğlu, A. Sorokin, R. Kumar, A. Scherbakov, E. M. Ponti, R. Cotterell, & E. Vylomova ( |
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Sheehan, O., Watts, J., Gray, R. D., Bulbulia, J., Claessens, S., Ringen, E. J., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2023). Coevolution of religious and political authority in Austronesian societies. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 38-45. |
2022
Barbieri, C., Blasi, D. E., Arango-Isaza, E., Sotiropoulos, A. G., Hammerström, H., Wichmann, S., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R. D., Forkel, R., Bickel, B., & Shimizu, K. K. (2022). A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(47): e2122084119. |
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Koile, E., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., Bouckaert, R., & Gray, R. D. (2022). Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32): e21128531. |
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List, J.-M., Forkel, R., Greenhill, S. J., Rzymski, C., Englisch, J., & Gray, R. D. (2022). Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features. Scientific Data, 9: 316. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S. M., Haynie, H. J., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., Gray, R. D., Gast, V., & Skirgård, H. (2022). Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic envornment. In A. Ravignani, R. Asano, D. Valente, F. Ferretti, S. Hartmann, M. Hayashi, Y. Jadoul, M. Martins, Y. Oseki, E. D. Rodrigues, O. Vasileva, & S. Wacewicz ( |
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Tresoldi, T., Rzymski, C., Forkel, R., Greenhill, S. J., List, J.-M., & Gray, R. D. (2022). Managing historical linguistic data for computational phylogenetics and computer-assisted language comparison. In A. L. Berez-Kroeker, B. McDonnel, & E. Koller ( |
2021
Núñez, R. E., d'Errico, F., Gray, R. D., & Bender, A. (2021). The perception of quantity ain't number: Missing the primacy of symbolic reference. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44: e199. |
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Evans, C. L., Greenhill, S. J., Watts, J., List, J.-M., Botero, C. A., Gray, R. D., & Kirby, K. (2021). The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 376(1828): 20200056. |
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Beheim, B. A., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., Gervais, W., Gray, R. D., Henrich, J., Lang, M., Monroe, M. W., Muthukrishna, M., Norenzayan, A., Purzycki, B. G., Shariff, A., Slingerland, E., Spicer, R., & Willard, A. K. (2021). Treatment of missing data determined conclusions regarding moralizing gods. Nature, 595, E29-E34. |
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King, B., Reid, L., Walworth, M., Greenhill, S., & Gray, R. D. (2021). Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Philippine languages supports rapid initial Austronesian expansion followed by northward back-migration. Talk presented at 15th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Palacky University. online. 2021-06-28 - 2021-07-01. |
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Starzak, T. B., & Gray, R. D. (2021). Towards ending the animal cognition war: A three-dimensional model of causal cognition. Biology and Philosophy, 36(2): 9, pp. 1-24. |
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Dussex, N., Kutschera, V. E., Wiberg, R. A. W., Parker, D. J., Hunt, G. R., Gray, R. D., Rutherford, K., Abe, H., Fleischer, R. C., Ritchie, M. G., Rutz, C., Wolf, J. B. W., & Gemmell, N. J. (2021). A genome-wide investigation of adaptive signatures in protein-coding genes related to tool behaviour in New Caledonian and Hawaiian crows. Molecular Ecology, 30(4): 15775, pp. 973-986. |
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Boeckle, M., Schiestl, M., Frohnwieser, A., Gruber, R., Miller, R., Suddendorf, T., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2021). New Caledonian crows' planning behaviour: a reply to de Mahyet al. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288(1958): 20211271. |
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Ejova, A., Krátký, J., Klocová, E. K., Kundt, R., Cigán, J., Kotherová, S., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2021). The awe-prosociality relationship: Evidence for the role of context. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 11(3), 294-311. |
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Verkerk, A., Haynie, H., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S., Shcherbakova, O., & Skirgard, H. (2021). Testing Greenberg’s universals on a global scale. Talk presented at 43. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. Freiburg (Online). 2021-02-23 - 2021-02-26. |
2020
Boeckle, M., Schiestl, M., Frohnwieser, A., Gruber, R., Miller, R., Suddendorf, T., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2020). New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1938): 20201490. |
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Vilela, B., Fristoe, T., Tuff, T., Kavanagh, P. H., Haynie, H. J., Gray, R. D., Gavin, M. C., & Botero, C. A. (2020). Cultural transmission and ecological opportunity jointly shaped global patterns of reliance on agriculture. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020.55. |
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Greenhill, S. J., Heggarty, P., & Gray, R. D. (2020). Bayesian Phylolinguistic. In R. D. Janda, B. D. Joseph, & B. S. Vance ( |
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Uomini, N., Fairlie, J., Gray, R. D., & Griesser, M. (2020). Extended parenting and the evolution of cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 375(1803): 20190495. |
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Bräuer, J., Hanus, D., Pika, S., Gray, R. D., & Uomini, N. (2020). Old and new approaches to animal cognition: There is not “One Cognition”. Journal of Intelligence, 8(3). |
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Miller, R., Gruber, R., Frohnwieser, A., Schiestl, M., Jelbert, S. A., Gray, R. D., Boeckle, M., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2020). Decision-making flexibility in New Caledonian crows, young children and adult humans in a multi-dimensional tool-use task. PLoS One, 15(3): e0219874. |
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Rzymski, C., Tresoldi, T., Greenhill, S. J., Wu, M.-S., Schweikhard, N. E., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Gast, V., Bodt, T. A., Hantgan, A., Kaiping, G. A., Chang, S., Lai, Y., Morozova, N., Arjava, H., Hübler, N., Koile, E., Pepper, S., Proos, M., Epps, B. V., Blanco, I., Hundt, C., Monakhov, S., Pianykh, K., Ramesh, S., Gray, R. D., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2020). The database of cross-linguistic colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies. Scientific Data, 7: 13. |
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Haun, D., Liebal, K., Amici, F., Bender, A., Bohn, M., Bräuer, J., Buttelmann, D., Burkart, J., Cacchione, T., DeTroy, S., Faßbender, I., Fichtel, C., Fischer, J., Gampe, A., Gray, R. D., Horn, L., Oña, L. S., Kärtner, J., Kaminski, J., Kanngießer, P., Keller, H., Köster, M., Kopp, K. S., Kornadt, H.-J., Rakoczy, H., Schuppli, C., Stengelin, R., Trommsdorff, G., Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., & Schaik, C. v. (2020). Ein Plädoyer für die Relevanz der Vergleichenden Psychologie für das Verständnis menschlicher Entwicklung (Kommentare zu Daum, M. M., Greve, W.,Pauen, S., Schuhrke, B. und Schwarzer, G.(2020). Positionspapier der Fachgruppe Entwicklungspsychologie: Ein Versuch einer Standortbestimmung. In: Psychologische Rundschau, 71(1), 24-46). Psychologische Rundschau, 71(1), 40-41. |
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Miller, R., Frohnwieser, A., Schiestl, M., McCoy, D. E., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2020). Delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and young children: influence of reward type and visibility. Animal Cognition, 23(1), 71-85. |
2019
Jackson, J. C., Watts, J., Henry, T. R., List, J.-M., Forkel, R., Mucha, P. J., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R. D., & Lindquist, K. A. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science, 366, 1517-1522. |
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Barbieri, C., Barquera, R., Arias, L., Sandoval, J. R., Acosta, O., Zurita, C., Aguilar-Campos, A., Tito-Álvarez, A. M., Serrano-Osuna, R., Gray, R. D., Mafessoni, F., Heggarty, P., Shimizu, K. K., Fujita, R., Stoneking, M., Pugach, I., & Fehren-Schmitz, L. (2019). The current genomic landscape of Western South America: Andes, Amazonia, and Pacific Coast. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 36(12), 2698-2713. |
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Heaney, M., Bastos, A. P. M., Gray, R. D., & Taylor, A. H. (2019). Are kea prosocial? Ethology, 126(2): eth.12944, pp. 176-184. |
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McCoy, D. E., Schiestl, M., Neilands, P., Hassall, R., Gray, R. D., & Taylor, A. H. (2019). New Caledonian crows behave optimistically after using tools. Current Biology, 29(16), 2737-2742.e3. |
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Haynie, H. J., Kavanagh, P. H., Jordan, F. M., Ember, C. R., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S. J., Kirby, K., Kushnick, G., Low, B. S., Tuff, T., Vilela, B., Botero, C. A., & Gavin, M. C. (2019). Pathways to social inequality. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 3: E35. |
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Coelho, M. T. P., Pereira, E. B., Haynie, H. J., Rangel, T. F., Kavanagh, P., Kirby, K., Greenhill, S. J., Bowern, C., Gray, R. D., Colwell, R. K., Evans, N., & Gavin, M. C. (2019). Drivers of geographical patterns of North American language diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1899): 20190242. |
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Gruber, R., Schiestl, M., Boeckle, M., Frohnwieser, A., Miller, R., Gray, R. D., Clayton, N. S., & Taylor, A. H. (2019). New Caledonian Crows use mental representations to solve metatool problems. Current Biology, 29(4), 686-692. |
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Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2019). Did ritualized human sacrifice help build and sustain social inequality? In J. Slone, & W. McCorkle Jr. ( |
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Jelbert, S. A., Miller, R., Schiestl, M., Boeckle, M., Cheke, L. G., Gray, R. D., Taylor, A. H., & Clayton, N. S. (2019). New Caledonian crows infer the weight of objects from observing their movements in a breeze. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1894): 20182332. |
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Posth, C., Nägele, K., Colleran, H., Valentin, F., Bedford, S., Gray, R. D., Krause, J., & Powell, A. (2019). Response to “Ancient DNA and its contribution to understanding the human history of the Pacific Islands” (Bedford et al. 2018). Archaeology in Oceania, 54, 57-61. |
2018
Moravec, J. C., Atkinson, Q., Bowern, C., Greenhill, S. J., Jordan, F. M., Ross, R. M., Gray, R. D., Marsland, S., & Cox, M. P. (2018). Post-marital residence patterns show lineage-specific evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(6), 594-601. |
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Forkel, R., List, J.-M., Greenhill, S. J., Rzymski, C., Bank, S., Cysouw, M., Hammarström, H., Haspelmath, M., Kaiping, G. A., & Gray, R. D. (2018). Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics. Scientific Data, 5: 180205. |
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Gavin, M. C., Kavanagh, P. H., Haynie, H. J., Bowern, C., Ember, C. R., Gray, R. D., Jordan, F. M., Kirby, K., Kushnick, G., Low, B. S., Vilela, B., & Botero, C. A. (2018). The global geography of human subsistence. Royal Society Open Science, 5(9): 171897. |
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Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Bulbulia, J., Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2018). Christianity spread faster in small, politically structured societies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 559-564. |
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Jelbert, S. A., Hosking, R. J., Taylor, A. H., & Gray, R. D. (2018). Mental template matching is a potential cultural transmission mechanism for New Caledonian crow tool manufacturing traditions. Scientific Reports, 8: 8956. |
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Kolipakam, V., Jordan, F. M., Dunn, M., Greenhill, S. J., Bouckaert, R., Gray, R. D., & Verkerk, A. (2018). A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family. Royal Society Open Science, 5(3): 171504. |
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Sheehan, O., Watts, J., Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2018). Coevolution of landesque capital intensive agriculture and sociopolitical hierarchy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(14), 3628-3633. |
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Do Kea Birds Have Cooperative Abilities? |
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Kavanagh, P. H., Vilela, B., Haynie, H. J., Tuff, T., Lima-Ribeiro, M., Gray, R. D., Botero, C. A., & Gavin, M. C. (2018). Hindcasting global population densities reveals forces enabling the origin of agriculture. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 478-484. |
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Posth, C., Nägele, K., Colleran, H., Valentin, F., Bedford, S., Kami, K. W., Shing, R., Buckley, H., Kinaston, R., Walworth, M., Clark, G. R., Reepmeyer, C., Flexner, J., Maric, T., Moser, J., Gresky, J., Kiko, L., Robson, K. J., Auckland, K., Oppenheimer, S. J., Hill, A. V. S., Mentzer, A. J., Zech, J., Petchey, F., Roberts, P., Jeong, C., Gray, R. D., Krause, J., & Powell, A. (2018). Language continuity despite population replacement in Remote Oceania. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(4), 731-740. |
2017
Greenhill, S. J., Wu, C.-H., Hua, X., Dunn, M., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Evolutionary dynamics of language systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(42), E8822-E8829. |
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Gray, R. D., & Watts, J. (2017). Cultural macroevolution matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(30), 7846-7852. |
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Gavin, M. C., Rangel, T. F., Bowern, C., Colwell, R. K., Kirby, K. R., Botero, C. A., Dunn, M., Dunn, R. R., McCarter, J., Coelho, M. T. P., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 26(5), 584-591. |
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Heaney, M., Gray, R. D., & Taylor, A. H. (2017). Kea show no evidence of inequity aversion. Royal Society Open Science, 4(3): 160461. |
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Heaney, M., Gray, R. D., & Taylor, A. H. (2017). Keas perform similarly to chimpanzees and elephants when solving collaborative tasks. PLoS One, 12(2): e0169799. |
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List, J.-M., Greenhill, S. J., & Gray, R. D. (2017). The Potential of automatic word comparison for historical linguistics. PLoS One, 12(1): 0170046. |
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Bulbina, J., Fraser, G., Watts, J., Shaver, J. H., & Gray, R. D. (2017). Can honest signaling theory clarify religion’s role in the evolution of social inequality? Religion, Brain and Behavior, 7(4), 285-288. |
2016
Miller, R., Jelbert, S. A., Taylor, A. H., Cheke, L. G., Gray, R. D., Loissel, E., & Clayton, N. S. (2016). Performance in object-choice Aesop's fable tasks are influenced by object biases in new Caledonian crows but not in human children. PLoS One, 11(12): e0168056. |
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Kirby, K. R., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S. J., Jordan, F., Gomes-Ng, S., Bibiko, H.-J., Blasi, D. E., Botero, C. A., Bowern, C., Ember, C. R., Leehr, D., Low, B. S., McCarter, J., Divale, W., & Gavin, M. C. (2016). D-PLACE: A global database of cultural, linguistic and environmental diversity. PLoS One, 11(7): e0158391. |
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Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2016). Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature, 532(7598): 17159, pp. 228-231. |
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Matthews, L. J., Passmore, S., Richard, P. M., Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2016). Shared cultural history as a predictor of political and economic changes among nation states. PLoS One, 11(4): e0152979. |
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Matsui, H., Hunt, G. R., Oberhofer, K., Ogihara, N., McGowan, K. J., Mithraratne, K., Yamasaki, T., Gray, R. D., & Izawa, E.-I. (2016). Adaptive bill morphology for enhanced tool manipulation in New Caledonian crows. Scientific Reports, 6: 22776. |
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Did Religion Play a Causal Role in the Evolution of Large, Complex Societies? |
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Jelbert, S. A., Taylor, A. H., & Gray, R. D. (2016). Does absolute brain size really predict self-control? Hand-tracking training improves performance on the A-not-B task. Biology Letters, 12(2). |
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Watts, J., Bulbulia, J., Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2016). Clarity and causality needed in claims about Big Gods. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39(January): e27. |
2015
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Greenhill, S. J., Gomes-Ng, S., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015). Pulotu: Database of Austronesian supernatural beliefs and practices. PLoS One, 10(9): e0136783. |
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Taylor, A. H., Cheke, L. G., Waismeyer, A., Meltzoff, A., Miller, R., Gopnik, A., Clayton, N. S., & Gray, R. D. (2015). No conclusive evidence that corvids can create novel causal interventions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1813): 20150796. |
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Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1804): 20142556. |
2014
Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., Kirby, K. R., Bulbulia, J., Gavin, M. C., & Gray, R. D. (2014). The ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 111(47), 16784-16789. |
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Taylor, A. H., & Gray, R. D. (2014). Is there a link between the crafting of tools and the evolution of cognition? Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 5(6), 693-703. |
2012
Bouckaert, R., Lemey, P., Dunn, M. D., Greenhill, S. J., Alekseyenko, A. V., Drummond, A. J., Gray, R. D., Suchard, M. A., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2012). Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science, 337(6097), 957-960. |
2011
Nelson-Sathi, S., List, J.-M., Geisler, H., Fangerau, H., Gray, R. D., Martin, W., & Dagan, T. (2011). Networks uncover hidden lexical borrowing in Indo-European language evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278(1713), 1794-1803. |
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Dunne, M., Greenhill, S. J., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D. (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 473(7345), 79-82. |
2009
Gray, R. D., Drummond, A. J., & Greenhill, S. J. (2009). Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science, 323(5913), 479-483. |
2007
Taylor, A. H., Hunt, G. R., Holzhaider, J. C., & Gray, R. D. (2007). Spontaneous metatool use by New Caledonian crows. Current Biology, 17(17), 1504-1507. |
2003
Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2003). Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature, 426(6965), 435-439. |
1994
Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (1994). Developmental systems and evolutionary explanation. The Journal of Philosophy, 91(6), 277-304. |
1992
Gray, R. D. (1992). Death of the gene: developmental systems strike back. In P. Griffiths ( |
Russell Gray: "Macro matters"
Talk presented at the National Academy of Sciences Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium on the Extension of Biology Through Culture.
Published December 7, 2016
Nijmegen lectures (2014)
Russell Gray: DNA and language
Originally aired 20 June 2015 - Russell Gray talks to Kim Hill from Radio New Zealand about the evolution of language, specifically about the origins of the Indo-European languages. In this interview he also expresses his concern about the lack of basic science funding in New Zealand