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Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to identify the individual homelands of the five families making up the Transeurasian grouping, i.e. the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic families. Combining various linguistic methods and principles such as the diversity hotspot principle, phylolinguistics, cultural reconstruction and contact linguistics, we try to determine the original location and time depth of the families under discussion. We further propose that the individual speech communities were originally familiar with millet agriculture, while terms for pastoralism or wet-rice agriculture entered their vocabularies only at a later stage.