Study points to a linguistic golden age 3,000 years ago

Humanity may have experienced a linguistic golden age between roughly 1000 B.C.E. and 1000 C.E., when people around the world spoke far more languages than exist today, according to new research published in Science.

Drawing on computational models, population estimates and ethnographic records spanning the Holocene, researchers estimate humans may have used between 20,000 and 75,000 languages during that period. Today, people speak about 7,500. The study suggests that as large, multinational states expanded, their dominant tongues spread as well, contributing to the disappearance of many smaller languages.

Modeling a linguistic golden age

Because many ancient languages left no trace, the team reconstructed broad patterns of linguistic diversity over the last 12,000 years using indirect evidence. Their modeling indicates that prior to the rise of agriculture, humans likely spoke between 4,500 and 6,200 languages.

After domestication boosted population sizes, the number of languages also climbed, peaking between 1000 B.C.E. and 1000 C.E. before declining as expanding empires carried languages, pathogens and cultures into new territories. The researchers note that cultural traditions often travel with language, so many customs may have vanished alongside lost tongues.

The authors do not single out specific empires or regions responsible for the global contraction. Instead, they describe a broad, worldwide decline in linguistic diversity in the past millennium. One notable finding, according to study co-author Claire Bowern of Yale University, is how recent the peak appears to be, occurring in the era of expanding states rather than deep prehistory.

Decline continues in the modern era

The trend persists today. At least four languages die out annually, according to the study’s editor’s summary, and as many as 1,500 known languages could disappear by 2100. While language loss is often linked to European colonialism over the last five centuries, the new results indicate the contraction began earlier, at least a thousand years ago.

Lead author Damián Blasi of Harvard University and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies said the work suggests it takes less than a colonial superpower to erode linguistic diversity.

Even with fewer languages, modern speech still exhibits remarkable variety, from click consonants and tonal systems to diverse grammatical structures. If the analysis is correct, however, today’s diversity may represent only a small fraction of what once existed. Some features that were once common could have vanished with the languages that carried them.

Debate over the scale of loss

The authors argue that extinction has likely shaped which languages and features survived, rather than any inherent superiority of those used today. They describe the present landscape as the outcome of a selective historical bottleneck, preserved as the populations speaking certain languages grew and spread.

Not all linguists agree. Lyle Campbell of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, who was not involved in the work, called the approach highly speculative and noted the difficulty of reconstructing deep linguistic history.

Despite the uncertainty, the study underscores how quickly languages can disappear and how much of humanity’s linguistic heritage may already be gone. Concerns about cultural loss have surfaced in other contexts as well, such as debates over artifacts described in a recent French museum’s ‘Wanted’ drive.