The ancestral language of half the world reveals our shared culture

The hunt for the prehistoric mom tongue that gave rise to dozens of the languages we communicate as we speak reminds us of the scientific case for worldwide identification

WHEN it involves speaking and connecting with others, language is a very powerful software now we have. But it isn’t all the time a unifying drive. A survey of individuals in 14 high-income international locations, for instance, discovered that language was thought-about by far essentially the most important consider defining nationwide identification, which suggests we are inclined to suppose individuals who don’t communicate “our national language” might not belong.

The reconstruction of prehistoric languages provides an intriguing antidote to this mind-set. As we discover in a characteristic this week, “The hunt for the misplaced ancestral language of Europe and southern Asia“, most of the world’s tongues share …