From words to dates: Water into wine, mathemagic or phylogenetic inference?

Gray and Atkinson's (2003) application of quantitative phylogenetic methods to Dyen, Kruskal and Black's (1992) Indo-European database produced controversial divergence time estimates. Here we test the robustness of these results using an alternative data set of ancient Indo-European languages. We employ two very different stochastic models of lexical evolution - Gray and Atkinson's (2003) finite-sites model and a stochastic-Dollo model of word evolution introduced by Nicholls and Gray (in press). Results of this analysis support the findings of Gray and Atkinson (2003). We also tested the ability of both methods to reconstruct phylogeny and divergence times accurately from synthetic data. The methods performed well under a range of scenarios, including widespread and localized borrowing. © The Philological Society 2005