Over human history, many languages have disappeared and continue to disappear!
Why should the evolution of human languages be so different than the biological evolution? Do we need about 7,000 existing and actively spoken languages on our planet?
Hopefully, the Tower of Babel will go away in the 21st century. The world would be a much better place if we all speak the same language (with or without machine translation)!
Is this article another way of trying to indoctrinate with the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) ideology?
The approach taken in this study, i.e. a kind of extrapolation from present-day hunter-gatherers, is certainly questionable if not junk! This assumption is possibly a very strong inductive bias! What if e.g. the first humans spoke only one or a few languages and that for a long time before language diversity emerged maybe with the geographic spread of humans?
Notice that this study does not blame colonialism, but the preceding multinational empire building and expansion for the loss of languages.
"Humanity’s linguistic diversity is in trouble [???]. Roughly half of the 7500 languages signed or spoken today are endangered [???], and at least four go extinct every year. But while preserving the languages that do persist is a top priority, a new study in Science suggests that we are already more than one millennium beyond humanity’s linguistic “golden age.”
Linguists have long debated when the most languages were in use: Some have argued that the total number of languages remained roughly steady from the last ice age until modern-day European colonialism, others suggested that diversity has steadily declined since the dawn of agriculture about 12,000 years ago, and a third camp theorized a high point sometime before large states became established 4000 years ago.
Since writing was not developed until around 6000 years ago, however, understanding dynamics of early language remained challenging.
So, a team of anthropologists applied data on the languages, distributions, and behaviors of present-day hunter-gatherers to estimates of the total human population size and the size and number of individual cultures over the last 12,000 years. This allowed them to create a model of the total number of languages in use at any point since the last ice age ended.
The researchers showed that linguistic diversity rose steadily for around 10,000 years, reaching a “golden age” of tens of thousands of languages around 1000 to 3000 years ago before entering a language loss free-fall that continues to this day. The results reveal that the language crisis is not the result of modern colonialism but rather the culmination of millennia of cultural exchange and homogenization."
"... The golden age was followed by a period of rapid decline in linguistic diversity that coincided with the rise of large states and multinational empires, such as the Roman Empire, the researchers found. The finding challenges a commonly held view that widespread language extinction began later, about 500 years ago, with the onset of European colonial expansion. ..."
"To the Point
- Fewer languages before agriculture: The researchers estimate that between approximately 4,500 and 6,200 languages were spoken at the beginning of the Holocene, around 12,000 years ago - probably fewer than the roughly 7,500 languages spoken and signed today.
- A linguistic “golden age”: As the global human population grew, language diversity also increased. The models suggest that tens of thousands of languages may have existed between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago.
- A deep history of language loss: The decline in linguistic diversity appears to have begun with the expansion of large states and empires, long before modern European colonialism.
- Today’s languages are survivors [???]: The languages spoken today represent a small and historically biased sample of past linguistic diversity [???], with important implications for how researchers explain global patterns in language and culture.
...
They began with ethnographic data from 171 hunter-gatherer and fisher societies whose traditional subsistence and mobility had not been profoundly transformed by contact with food-producing populations. These data allowed the researchers to estimate the likely distribution of ethnolinguistic group sizes near the beginning of the Holocene.
The team then combined these estimates with reconstructions suggesting that the global human population 12,000 years ago was between approximately 4.4 and seven million. Assuming that ethnolinguistic groups at that time generally corresponded to distinct languages, the models produced an early-Holocene estimate centred on roughly 4,500 to 6,200 languages, although broader plausible estimates ranged from around 3,300 to 7,800. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
More than four languages are lost every year, and this rate is predicted to increase. Blasi et al. investigated how language diversity has changed over the Holocene using a Bayesian modeling approach, ethnographic data, and estimates of the total human population size over time.
They assumed a maximum size of ethnolinguistic groups and that the number of different ethnolinguistic groups is related to the number of languages. Their findings suggested that language loss is not a new phenomenon, and that language diversity has been decreasing rapidly over the past one to three millennia following a peak of an order of magnitude higher diversity than we see today. ...
Abstract
Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition.
In this study, we combined statistical and social computational modeling, ethnographic data, and paleodemographic inference to model trajectories of global linguistic diversity.
Before the onset of plant and animal domestication, the number of languages was smaller than it is today (4500 to 6000 compared with 7500).
Subsequent increases in global population precipitated increased linguistic diversity.
We uncovered a linguistic “golden age” with tens of thousands of languages 3000 to 1000 years ago. Great loss of linguistic diversity did not begin with recent colonial expansion but as multinational empires first spread along with their languages, pathogens, and cultures. Thus, extinction has likely played a much greater role in shaping linguistic and cultural diversity than previously thought."
Study uncovers lost ‘golden age’ of languages (original news release) "A new study coauthored by Yale linguist Claire Bowern suggests that tens of thousands of languages were spoken between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago."
The lost golden age of language diversity (original news release)
The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene (no public access)
Map of currently spoken and signed languages of the world, colored by endangerment status.
