AI Insight
A new study suggests that human linguistic diversity may have been approximately ten times greater 2,000 years ago than it is today, with humans potentially speaking tens of thousands of distinct languages during what researchers describe as a "golden age" of linguistic diversity. This dramatic reduction in language variety represents a significant loss of human cultural and cognitive heritage over the past two millennia.
Why it matters
This finding highlights the massive scale of language extinction that has occurred throughout human history, providing context for current efforts to preserve endangered languages. Understanding historical patterns of linguistic diversity can inform conservation strategies and help document the cultural knowledge encoded in languages before they disappear.
Understand the Science
During a lost ‘golden age’ of language, humans may have spoken tens of thousands of different tongues, a new study suggests
Source: Humans may have spoken 10 times as many languages 2,000 years ago