A new study published in the journal Science has revealed that the world once experienced a remarkable “golden age” of linguistic diversity, with researchers estimating that tens of thousands of languages were spoken between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago.
The international study, co-authored by Yale University linguist Professor Claire Bowern, is in direct contrast to the widely accepted view that the world’s dramatic loss of languages started primarily with European colonial expansion around 500 years ago. It shows that the decline started much earlier, when states and multinational empires were establishing themselves.
The researchers observe that the expansion of ancient civilisations like the Roman Empire has changed the linguistic landscape. As a result, as the dominant society spread their languages, cultures and political power, the languages of the smaller or absorbed communities gradually disappeared, leaving only a fraction of the linguistic diversity that once existed.
Today, approximately 7,600 spoken and signed languages remain. However, the study argues that these represent only a small and historically selective sample of the languages that existed throughout human history.
Because direct evidence of language is unavailable before the invention of writing around 6,000 years ago, the research team combined ethnographic records, prehistoric population estimates and advanced statistical modelling to reconstruct global language diversity throughout the Holocene, the geological epoch that began roughly 12,000 years ago.
Drawing on data from 171 hunter-gatherer and fishing societies, alongside estimates placing the world’s population between 4.4 and 7 million people at the start of the Holocene, the researchers calculated that between 4,500 and 6,200 languages were likely spoken at that time.
As agriculture spread and populations expanded, linguistic diversity also increased. The team’s models consistently indicate that the number of languages continued to grow over several millennia, reaching a peak of tens of thousands between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago—a period the researchers describe as the world’s linguistic “golden age”.
Professor Claire Bowern said the findings demonstrate that language has long been shaped by broader historical and political developments.
“Language isn’t isolated from political currents,” Bowern said. “Our work demonstrates that we can use patterns in language to reconstruct large demographic events over the course of millennia. We also show that this dynamic has been a facet of human history for much longer than previously thought.”
The researchers argue that this flourishing period ended as increasingly centralised states and multinational empires expanded across continents. Alongside the spread of dominant languages came the transmission of cultures, institutions and even diseases, contributing to the disappearance of many previously independent linguistic communities.
While European colonialism accelerated this process in more recent centuries, the study concludes that it was part of a much longer pattern of linguistic decline rather than its starting point.
The loss of so many languages has also influenced the structure of those that survive today. Modern languages are the result of a major historical bottleneck, the researchers say, and some linguistic features may seem widespread simply because they belonged to populations that expanded successfully rather than because they have some inherent communicative advantage.
The findings provide new insight into human language’s evolution and also impact today’s endangered languages. Language loss has never been inevitable and it is now clear the historical forces that drive it might help inform future conservation efforts, they argue.
The study was conducted by Yale University, Pompeu Fabra University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the Santa Fe Institute.
Sources : Yale University
