  The distribution of human linguistic groups presents a number of interesting
and non-trivial patterns. The distributions of the number of speakers per
language and the area each group covers follow log-normal distributions, while
population and area fulfill an allometric relationship. The topology of
networks of spatial contacts between different linguistic groups has been
recently characterized, showing atypical properties of the degree distribution
and clustering, among others. Human demography, spatial conflicts, and the
construction of networks of contacts between linguistic groups are mutually
dependent processes. Here we introduce an adaptive network model that takes all
of them into account and successfully reproduces, using only four model
parameters, not only those features of linguistic groups already described in
the literature, but also correlations between demographic and topological
properties uncovered in this work. Besides their relevance when modeling and
understanding processes related to human biogeography, our adaptive network
model admits a number of generalizations that broaden its scope and make it
suitable to represent interactions between agents based on population dynamics
and competition for space.
