Jump directly to main navigation Jump directly to content Jump to sub navigation

News/Press releases

Axisthesisfigure_-__09.02.24.jpg

Did Eurasia's dominant East-West axis "turn the fortunes of history"?

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

New research shows that environmental barriers have influenced the spread of cultural innovations but do not consistently favour Eurasia

Read more
map_press_release.png

The evolution of complex grammars

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

A new study shows that changes in grammatical complexity are not shaped by social environments

Read more
MPI-PH-Hypothesis3-PressRelease.jpg

New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Linguistics and genetics combine to suggest a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages

Read more
Parque.jpg

Tracing Chile’s indigenous roots through Genetics and Linguistics

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Genetic analysis adds new perspectives on the (pre)history of South America - from the first settlement until today

Read more
Emae_m.jpg

Long distance voyaging among the Pacific Islands

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Geochemical analyses of stone artefacts reveal long-distance voyaging among Pacific Islands during the last millennium

Read more
03a_3_GB_RGB.png

Grambank shows the diversity of the world's languages

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

An international team has created a new database that documents patterns of grammatical variation in over 2400 of the world’s languages

Read more
Hunde.jpg

How dogs are used impacts how they are treated

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Data from 124 societies shows that dogs’ functions predict their treatment, with closer bonds forming in societies where dogs have multiple roles

Read more
118768494_m_boggy22.jpg

Genes and tongues are not always tied together

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

GeLaTo, a global database, helps to explore the complex history of our genes and languages

Read more
Somalia_farmers2_gemeinfrei.jpg

The Bantu expansion took a rainforest route

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

A recent linguistic study found that early Bantu speakers crossed through the dense Central African Rainforest 4,000 years ago

Read more
87803586_m_123rf_bee32.jpg

Shedding light on linguistic diversity and its evolution

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Linguists and computer scientists collaborate to publish a large global Open Access lexical database

Read more
ellenbogengesellschaft_bg_grau__1_.jpg

Studying the evolution, the distribution and the psychology of word families

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

An ERC Consolidator Grant was awarded to Johann-Mattis List, a research group leader in the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max…

Read more
NoRaRe-wordcloud.jpeg

NoRaRe: A Multilingual Database of Word and Concept Properties

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

A new study in Behavior Research Methods by a team of researchers in Germany presents the Database of Cross-Linguistic Norms, Ratings, and Relations…

Read more
original.jpeg

10 Million Euro ERC Synergy Grant Awarded for Study of the Cognitive and Cultural Evolution of Numeracy

Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

The QUANTA project is the first concerted effort to address the ambitious questions of when, why, and how tools for quantification emerged and evolved

Read more