Scholars believe a language used 5,000 years ago on the Asian steppe was the source of many of the world’s modern tongues.

D ante did like a category. Famously, he split sinners into different circles in Hell. Those who committed milder ...

Imagine being able to travel back thousands of years, not with a time machine, but through the words our ancestors spoke. It ...

Hunting the origin of 40 per cent of the languages spoken today is a huge feat, but Laura Spinney's new book makes an ...

Last Word is New Scientist’s long-running series in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions, ranging ...

Comparison of words for biological species from languages of the same language family facilitates reconstruction of the biological vocabulary of the family’s ancient proto-language. This study uses ...

Spinney tells the epic and fascinating story of how one ancient language – Proto-Indian-European – went global; its offspring languages are now spoken by disparate cultures from Scotland to China.

developed significance for different prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which maize terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal ...

Yet their legacy persists, hidden within the words of the languages spoken by more than three billion people today. In “Proto,” Laura Spinney details the centurieslong effort to reconstruct ...