The silence of long-lost languages<\/p>\n
Blasi, Dami\u00e1n et al. The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene. Science.<\/a><\/p>\n Some 3,000 years ago, a \u201cgolden age\u201d of languages dawned around the world, resulting in the proliferation of tens of thousands of tongues over the next 2,000 years. But over the past millennia, we have entered a dark age of linguistic diversity, driven by the rise of \u201cbehemoth languages\u201d that have pushed others into extinction.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the conclusion of a new study that reconstructed humanity\u2019s linguistic diversity since the dawn of agriculture, which emerged about 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age.\u00a0<\/p>\n The global human population before agriculture is estimated to have been between 4.4 and seven million people. Modern hunter-gatherer societies can act as rough proxies for the likely distribution, sizes, and linguistic diversity of these preagricultural populations. With that in mind, researchers led by Dami\u00e1n Blasi of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona developed a model based on 171 hunter-gatherer groups, which suggested that humans spoke about 4,500 to 6,000 languages before the dawn of agriculture. That\u2019s fewer than the 7,500 that are spoken today, but still a lot considering how few people there were on Earth at the time.<\/p>\n The team then ran thousands of models predicting how languages diversified and evolved as humans adopted plant and animal domestication, a process that radically increased populations and complexified cultures. The predictions converged around a scenario in which linguistic diversity peaked around 2,000 years ago with possibly as many 75,000 tongues spoken worldwide.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe uncovered a linguistic \u2018golden age\u2019 with tens of thousands of languages 3,000 to 1,000 years ago,\u201d Blasi\u2019s team said in the study.\u201dIn our model, this \u201cgolden age\u201d was followed by an extremely rapid decrease in linguistic diversity, especially over the last two millennia.\u201d<\/p>\n The spread of colonialism over the past 500 years has accelerated language loss due to the ascent of behemoth languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi. But the new study suggests that linguistic diversity was already in decline starting at least 1,000 years ago due to the formation of smaller-scale multinational empires. Sadly, this trend of linguistic impoverishment has far-reaching consequences beyond language itself.<\/p>\n \u201cLanguages (and their histories) are regularly utilized as proxies for other units of culture because language is often transmitted and acquired along with other cultural traits, including marriage patterns, religious practices, kinship systems, or modes of social organization,\u201d the team concluded. \u201cTherefore, cultural variants with transmission dynamics similar to those of languages have also undergone a recent mass extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n In other news\u2026<\/p>\n The unfinished work of Alan Turing<\/p>\n Dillon, Sarah. \u201c\u2018Pryce\u2019s Buoy\u2019: Alan Turing\u2019s Autofictional Short Story.\u201d The Review of English Studies.<\/a><\/p>\n Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician who helped break the Nazi enigma code, packed a mind-boggling list of accomplishments into his short life. A foundational figure in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence, Turing died at just 41 of cyanide poisoning in the wake of horrific persecution from the British government for what was then the crime of being a gay man.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his spare time from dramatically changing the course of history, Turing also tried his hand at writing fiction, according to a new study about his erotic short story \u201cPryce\u2019s Buoy.\u201d The draft is an autofictional account of Turing\u2019s affair with his young lover Arnold Murray, a relationship that ultimately forced Turing to endure a sentence of chemical castration to avoid prison in the 1950s.<\/p>\n The draft is cut short before any sexual encounter between the characters\u2014perhaps because Turing\u2019s family censored it, or perhaps because Turing left it unfinished\u2014though the tale is very clearly headed to the bedroom. Sarah Dillon of the University of Cambridge revisits the story in a new study that contextualizes it in the final years of Turing’s life and links it directly to the works of gay writer Sir Angus Wilson by revealing that Turing copied many of Wilson\u2019s stylistic choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWilson braved\u2026dangers\u2014he did not hide his homosexuality, and he did publish his work,\u201d said Dillon in the study. \u201cTuring did not hide his sexuality either, and although he did not publish his story, we cannot say whether this was through choice or because of the abrupt end to his life in June 1954.\u201d<\/p>\n Turing\u2019s life story is heartbreaking, but Dillon emphasized that \u201cPryce\u2019s Buoy\u201d is an expression of his playful, cheeky side, which persisted even in the midst of the immense injustice to which he was subjected.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s no moon\u2014it\u2019s an exosatellite<\/p>\nSarah Dillon with the handwritten draft of \u201cPryce\u2019s Buoy.\u201d Image: \u00a9 King\u2019s College, Cambridge<\/p>\n