Page "Indo-Pacific languages" Paragraph 1

According to Merritt Ruhlen, " In 1971 Greenberg presented evidence that the non-Austronesian languages of New Guinea – as well as certain languages on islands to the east and west of New Guinea – belong to an extremely diverse and ancient family that he named Indo-Pacific.

" In Ruhlen's view, Indo-Pacific is clearly much more ancient than Austronesian, which reflects a migration from southeast Asia that began only years ago ; he notes that New Guinea was inhabited by modern humans at least years ago, and possibly to years earlier than that.

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza describes Indo-Pacific as a very heterogenous family of 700 languages and suggests that it may be more than 40 000 years old.