Together, these families account for nearly 60% of the world's population: Indo-European (3.2 billion speakers), and Sino-Tibetan (1.4 billion). Based on a phylogenetic study of 50 ancient and modern Sino-Tibetan languages, the scholars conclude that the Sino-Tibetan languages originated among millet farmers, located in North China, around 7,200 years ago.ĭuring the past 10,000 years, two of the world's largest language families emerged, one in the west and one in the east of Eurasia. An interdisciplinary study published in PNAS, led by scientists of the Centre des Recherches Linguistiques sur l‘Asie Orientale (Paris), the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena), and the Centre de Recherches en Mathématiques de la Décision (Paris), now sheds new light on the place and date of the origin of these languages. Although the language family has been studied since the beginning of the 19 th century, scholars’ knowledge of the origin of these languages is still severely limited. It is one of the most diverse language families in the world, spoken by 1.4 billion speakers. The Sino-Tibetan language family includes early literary languages, such as Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese, and is represented by more than 400 modern languages spoken in China, India, Burma, and Nepal.