The concept of language change is old, and its history is reviewed in Hymes (1973) and Wells (1973). In some sense, glottochronology is a reconstruction of history and can often be closely related to archaeology. Many linguistic studies find the success of glottochronology to be found alongside archaeological data. Glottochronology itself dates back to the mid-20th century.Swadesh, Morris (1972). What is glottochronology? In M. Swadesh, The origin and diversification of languages (pp. 271–284). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Lees, Robert. (1953). The basis of glottochronology. Language, 29 (2), 113–127. An introduction to the subject is given in Embleton (1986)Embleton, Sheila M. (1986). Statistics in Historical Linguistics [Quantitative linguistics, vol. 30]. Bochum: Brockmeyer. . – State of the art up to then.
