Correlation of Y-DNA Haplogroups and Language Families

The distinction between the origin of a language and the origin of a people has been obvious among researchers already since the 19th century. The linguistic and genetic characteristics of cultural groups may behave very differently. However, despite the difficulties listed, it is by no means impossible to study genetic and linguistic features in a common framework. Historical genetics is a powerful tool for analysing migration routes, disjunction and admixtures of biological groups and their demographic expansions or compressions. Taking into account the above observations, we analyse whether the occurrence of a language family and subfamily correlates with certain Y-chromosome subgroups. We conclude that simple mathematical Pearson correlation between language families and deep Y-DNA haplogroup assignments can significantly contribute to the resolution of problems debated among linguists, especially in resolving the upstream phylogeny of Indo-European languages between Proto-Indo-European and well-established subfamilies. Our data also reinforces former observations regarding the genetic origin of proto-Uralic speaking groups and suggests new aspects for understanding the Y-DNA of proto-Altaic speakers. Our study proves that analysing correlations between language families and Y-DNA subhaplogroups is valid but should be based on high resolution Y-DNA data with deep subgroups younger than 5000 years, to obtain meaningful results.