PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea 1,2,3☯ 4☯ 2,5 Nicolas AntunesID *, Wulf SchiefenhoÈ vel , Francesco d'Errico , William 2,6 2☯ E. BanksID , Marian Vanhaeren a1111111111 1 RoÈmisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM), Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut fuÈr ArchaÈologie, Mainz, Germany, 2 CNRS, MCC, De la PreÂhistoire à l'Actuel: Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (PACEA), a1111111111 Univ. Bordeaux, Pessac, France, 3 Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of a1111111111 Human History, Jena, Germany, 4 Max-Planck-Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany, 5 SFF a1111111111 Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, 6 Biodiversity a1111111111 Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Indiana, United States of America ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. *
[email protected] OPEN ACCESS Citation: Antunes N, SchiefenhoÈvel W, d'Errico F, Abstract Banks WE, Vanhaeren M (2020) Quantitative Environmental parameters constrain the distributions of plant and animal species. A key methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language question is to what extent does environment influence human behavior. Decreasing linguis- distributions in New Guinea. PLoS ONE 15(10): tic diversity from the equator towards the poles suggests that ecological factors influence lin- e0239359. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. guistic geography. However, attempts to quantify the role of environmental factors in pone.0239359 shaping linguistic diversity remain inconclusive. To this end, we apply Ecological Niche Editor: Richard A Blythe, University of Edinburgh, Modelling methods to present-day language diversity in New Guinea.