The Austronesian Advantage: Natural Selection and Linguistic Diversity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is well organized. It lays out the central argument concerning the “Austronesian advantage” with clarity. It also provides the reader with a good overview of the work that has been carried out on this topic. More concretely, it gives the reader the general background information needed to understand the nature and spread of Austronesian languages as well as the different cultural theories put forward previously to explain their expansion. The discussion of the genetic aspects is well written. In this respect I particularly enjoyed the reader-friendly city bus analogy.

The key role of the genetic advantage conferred by being resistant to tropical splenomegaly syndrome is well argued. The reader has access to a detailed discussion of the combination of factors that were operating to explain the expansion of Austronesian languages, each factor conferring a distinct type of advantage, some cultural and some genetic. As a result, the reader can appreciate how evolutionary adaptation at the genetic level completes the picture by connecting the Austronesian expansion with greater reproductive success. In short, this transdisciplinary approach to the linguistic, anthropological, archaeological, and genetic data is welcome for it allows the reader to understand how cultural adaptations, taken in isolation, do not completely explain the expansion of Austronesian-speaking populations into the geographic regions in question.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I have converted in-text citations to endnotes and have reviewed the manuscript, again, for typographical errors.

Reviewer 2 Report

Line-by-line editorial suggestions:

23-24: the disease ... of China > references to the disease may have appeared in ancient Chinese texts

39: effort > efforts

46: Current Anthropology > Current Anthropology

63-64: malaria infested > malaria-infested

96: of Malayo-Polynesian language branch > of the Malayo-Polynesian branch

98: archeological > archaeological

148: and without it, the > and that without it the

154: Island > island

164: suggests when > suggests that when

164-5: Guinea, humans > Guinea humans

180: costal > coastal

193: furthers > further

196: which > that

205: adaptation, but > adaptation but

224: Timor and > Timor, and

260-261: is not isolated > is not an isolated

261: which > that

Author Response

Thank you for the comments.  Thank you for identifying the typos.  I corrected them.