[attach id=246953 size="medium"]Italian geneticist Giovanni Romeo. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli[/attach]
Poring over historic data from Vatican records or scouring languages for linguistic links might seem a million miles away from studying human genetics.
But for Italian geneticist Giovanni Romeo, using the physical and human sciences to help one another is merely following common sense.
Having used Vatican records of married relatives to study consanguinity, the Bologna-based genetics authority – he is co-founder of the European School of Genetic Medicine – is now spearheading European efforts to trace an evolutionary pattern through the history of human languages.
“Just as we can identify man’s various evolutionary steps over thousands of years, we should be able to do the same for human language,” said Prof. Romeo, who is in Malta to give a public lectureon his language-linked research tonight.
The idea is not new: as early as 1859, Charles Darwin was hypothesising that the evolution of man and of language moved alongside one another, side-by-side.
Our role, as scientists, is to bridge the gap that seems to have grown between science and society
To Prof. Romeo, the detective work done by geneticists, who use modern day DNA to pinpoint past evolutionary changes, could be imitated by linguists seeking to do the same.
That relatively little has been done to examine this idea in the ensuing 150 years was mainly a reflection of the poor tools available to linguists, Prof. Romeo argued.
“Linguistics remains far behind genetics when it comes to working methodologies. In genetics, we study present DNA and work backwards. We should be able to use the same idea in linguistics but we haven’t developed these methods... yet.”
American linguist Joseph Greenberg took a stab at it in the 1950s.
However his maps of human languages were harshly criticised by other linguists, who insisted the methodologies he used lacked subtlety.
Half a century later, Prof. Romeo and his research colleagues from the Universities of Bologna and York would now like to expand on the Greenberg model, using syntax – the rules of a language – to trace similarities.
Criticism of their attempts still remained, Prof. Romeo acknowledged.
“Some say the idea is a dream. But most of the resistance comes from the linguistic field, which I feel is still resistant to change.”
The research team has secured European funding until 2017.
“We have time. I’m confident we’ll get somewhere,” Prof. Romeo said with a smile.
That can-do attitude had served the Italian professor well when researching how the genetic diseases were passed down bloodlines.
In the past, cousins who wanted to get married had to get a special Church dispensation to do so. In Italy, those dispensations were archived in the Vatican.
It was another Italian geneticist, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who first thought of turning the sea of dispensation forms into a consanguinity map spanning Italy.
That demographic data then allowed Prof. Romeo to dis-cover the frequency of particular genes within the population.
It also helped develop ways of preventing the spread of disorders, such as screening and pre-marital counselling.
Asked about his eagerness to bring genetics down from its test tube tower and open it up to the social sciences, Prof. Romeo was quick to credit colleagues in other academic fields.
“None of it could have been possible without excellent collaboration,” he said.
“But our role, as scientists, is to bridge the gap that seems to have grown between science and society. We need to go a bit deeper than simply announcing ‘we found this’, or ‘we discovered that’.”
His public lecture, titled Meeting Darwin’s Last Challenge, will be held at St James Cavalier, Valletta, starting at 7pm.