The Tree of Language, by Stefano Schiaffi

Most linguists believe that all the different languages of the world have sprung from an ancient single language just like branches of a single tree.

The first to undergo this kind of research was Sir William Jones, who noticed in 1786 that Latin, Greek and Sanskrit had striking similarities that couldn’t merely put down to chance.

This being the first of many remarks, research has gone on to identify a protolanguage named proto-Indo-European, spoken perhaps 7000 years ago, the vocabulary of which gives extremely interesting hints about different aspects of ancient cultures, e.g. pointing out habits like farming or domesticating animals. This protolanguage is thought to have been spoken in the Transcaucasus, from whence it spread eastwards towards the far-east and westwards towards Europe.

Despite research upon proto-Indo-European is now close to completion, or perhaps just because of that, some linguists have come up with the idea that proto-Indo-European is just a branch of a more ancient language which they’ve called Nostratic and which is supposed to have been spoken 15000 years ago. As a consequence, it shouldn’t make any distinctions between wild and domesticating animals, nor should it have any words for crop, thus reflecting an earlier stage of human civilisation.

Even if not all linguists agree with this theory, as stated above most admit that the monogenesis of language is plausible and that leads them to another amazing theory: perhaps it was thanks to the use of language that the homo sapiens was able to survive at the expenses of the Neanderthals.