The study of crop origins has traditionally involved identifying geographic areas of high morphological diversity, sampling populations of wild progenitor species, and the archaeological retrieval of macroremains. Recent investigations have added identification of plant microremains (phytoliths, pollen, and starch grains), biochemical and molecular genetic approaches, and dating through 14 C accelerator mass spectrometry. We investigate the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, by combining two approaches, species distribution modeling and paleobiolinguistics, with microsatellite genetic data and archaeobotanical data. The combination of these four lines of evidence yields consensus models indicating that domestication of C. annuum could have occurred in one or both of two areas of Mexico: northeastern Mexico and central-east Mexico. Genetic evidence shows more support for the more northern location, but jointly all four lines of evidence support central-east Mexico, where preceramic macroremains of chili pepper have been recovered in the Valley of Tehuacán. Located just to the east of this valley is the center of phylogenetic diversity of Proto-Otomanguean, a language spoken in mid-Holocene times and the oldest protolanguage for which a word for chili pepper reconstructs based on historical linguistics. For many crops, especially those that do not have a strong archaeobotanical record or phylogeographic pattern, it is difficult to precisely identify the time and place of their origin. Our results for chili pepper show that expressing all data in similar distance terms allows for combining contrasting lines of evidence and locating the region(s) where cultivation and domestication of a crop began.

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This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is based on lexical similarity as determined from Levenshtein (edit) distances rather than on cognate percentages, and (4) it provides a formula for date calculation that mathematically recognizes the lexical heterogeneity of individual languages, including parent languages just before their breakup into daughter languages. Automated judgments of lexical similarity for groups of related languages are calibrated with historical, epigraphic, and archaeological divergence dates for 52 language groups. The discrepancies between estimated and calibration dates are found to be on average 29% as large as the estimated dates themselves, a figure that does not differ significantly among language families. As a resource for further research that may require dates of known level of accuracy, we offer a list of ASJP time depths for nearly all the world's recognized language families and for many subfamilies. The greater the degree of linguistic differentiation within a stock, the greater is the period of time that must be assumed for the development of such differentiations.

Berlin and Kay's (1969) pioneering research in the area of color categorization and Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven's (1973) recent innovative work in folk biology present ethnoscience with an alternative to its patent relativistic perspective on naming behavior.' Rather than focusing upon different ways in which speakers of various languages classify and name simliar phenomena, these two studies demonstrate universal principles in categorization processes, thereby giving new impetus to the anthropological determination o f parameters of human psychic unity.3These studies treat somewhat different kinds of universals. Berlin and Kay's (1969) approach fundamentally involves description of the pervasive manner in which a perceptual space, i .e., the color spectrum, is partitioned? They determine that certain lexemes o f every language-basic color terms-are related referentially to the same focal areas of the perceptual grid. On the other hand, Berlin, e t al. (1973), rather than treating the relationship o f categorization t o structured perception, isolate universal principles of nomenclature (labeling) connected with classificatory systems, i.e., biological folk taxonomies. The kinds of principles discovered by Berlin, e t al. can be conveniently referred to as classification-nomenclature universals to distinguish them from classification-perception universals described by Berlin and Kay. ' Brown, Kolar, Torrey, Trdbng-Quang, and Vol kman (1 976) suggest that specific classification-nomenclature universals discovered for both biological (cf. Berlin, e t al. 1973) and nonbiological (cf. Brown, e t al. 1976) folk taxonomy pertain as well to certain nontaxonomic category systems. Because o f their resemblance in several respects to folk taxonomies, these systems have been named "partonomies" (cf. Brown, e t al. 1976).There are a number of differences as well as similarities between partonomies and taxonomies-see especially McClure (1 975) for differences; definitionally the most significant difference i s that partonomies are based on "part of" relationships, while taxonomies are based on "kind of" relationships. This paper is concerned with describing both classification-perception and classification-nomenclature principles in human anatomical partonomy. Some speculative comments concerning the growth of partonomic nomenclature are also offered.

An approach to the classification of languages through automated lexical comparison is described. This method produces near-expert classifications. At the core of the approach is the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP). ASJP is applied to 100-item lists of core vocabulary from 245 globally distributed languages. The output is 29,890 lexical similarity percentages for the same number of paired languages. Percentages are used as a database in a program originally designed for generating phylogenetic trees in biology. This program yields branching structures (ASJP trees) reflecting the lexical similarity of languages. ASJP trees for languages of the sample spoken in Middle and South America show that the method is capable of grouping together on distinct branches languages of non-controversial genetic groups. In addition, ASJP sub-branching for each of nine respective genetic groups -Mayan, Mixe-Zoque, Otomanguean, Huitotoan-Ocaina, Tacanan, Chocoan, Muskogean, Indo-European, and Austro-Asiatic -agrees substantially with subgrouping for those groups produced by expert historical linguists. Among many other uses, ASJP can be applied to search for possible relationships among languages heretofore not observed or only provisionally recognized. Preliminary ASJP analysis reveals several such possible relationships for languages of Middle and South America. Expanding the ASJP database to all of the world's languages for which 100-word lists can be assembled is a realistic goal that could be achieved in a relatively short period of time, maybe less than a year. STUF, Berlin 61 (2008) 4, 285-308 * We are grateful to André Müller for setting up the website for the references to the sources of the Swadesh lists.We would also like to thank Patience Epps for providing comments relating to the classification of languages of South America. Others who responded with comments to a first draft of this paper or in other important ways deserve our gratitude as well. These include