Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. Before the onset of plant and animal domestication, the number of languages was smaller than it is today (4500 to 6000 compared with 7500 today). Subsequent increases in global population precipitated increased linguistic diversity. A new study 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 multi-national empires first spread along with their languages and cultures. Thus, extinction has likely played a much greater role in shaping linguistic and cultural diversity than previously thought.

Human uniqueness isn’t because humans alone of all mammal species run on two feet; because ostriches can do that. Nor is Human uniqueness due to making tools; because Chimps, Bonobos, New Caledonia crows and a half dozen other animals also make tools.

Humans are unique because they are the only species that can tell stories and worship the Divine.

Languages and religions are ubiquitous among humans. Every tribe, no matter how small or isolated, speaks a language and believes in a religion. These two activities are the most important in all human culture.

Linguists estimate that between 31,000 and perhaps 400-500,000 languages have existed throughout human history. Because speech leaves no fossil record, exact numbers are impossible to prove.

Linguists have discovered over 6,900 spoken languages; and have documented almost 600 more that were, and no-longer are, spoken. Every few years the last living speaker of a small tribal language dies. By the end of the 21st century there will probably be; 50-100 fewer spoken and 50-100 more dead; languages. The widely spoken languages grow and the smaller languages fade away.

The same is true for religions; and the Gods they worship. The vast majority of the world’s religions in the past were polytheistic, so the number of Gods and Spirits worshiped by name was almost 4,000: but who today believes in Zeus or Helios, or any of the other gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman pantheon. And who today believes in Odin, chief god of the Nordic religion, or Thor of the mighty hammer, or the rest of the Norse pantheon. Or the ancient Aztec and Mayan gods.

Hebrew is the oldest of the ongoing monotheistic religions; and Arabic is the most recent of the universal monotheist religions (although Catholics no longer pray in Latin).

The original language of Islam is Arabic. The foundational texts of the religion, including the Quran (the word of God as revealed to Prophet Muhammad) and the Hadith (the recorded sayings of the Prophet), were originally recorded and preserved in Quranic Arabic.

Because........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)