Researchers Believe a Common Language is the Root of Everything from English to Urdu to Japanese

According to new research, languages spoken across Europe and Asia are descended from one ancient language that was used at the end of the last ice age. British researchers have uncovered evidence of this "common tongue" that provides an origin point for languages as diverse as English, Urdu, and Japanese. All in all, this ancient language could form an ancestral source for the languages of billions of people today.

The proposed ancient language would have been spoken at least 15,000 years ago, and would later to give rise to seven offshoots that form an equally ancient Eurasiatic "superfamily." These seven would later split and continue to split into the languages we know today.

"Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets were retreating," said Reading University evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel.

The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily is controversial in linguistic circles. It is difficult to track because many words evolve so rapidly, that researchers have difficulty finding their ancestry. According to prior studies, most words have a 50% chance of being totally replaced by an unrelated term every 2,000 to 4,000 years.

However, some words tend to survive longer than others, even as long as tens of thousands of years. These more frequently used pronouns, numbers, and adverbs are what the researchers focused on. For their study, Pagel and his team used a computer program that predicted which words would've lasted the longest. They then compared the results to a database of early words constructed by other linguists.

"Sure enough," said Pagel, "the words we predicted would be similar, were similar."

The researchers listed 23 words that were found in at least four of the proposed Eurasiatic ancient languages. These words included pronouns such as "I" and "we," as well as commonly used terms such as "man" and "mother." Surprisingly though, terms like "to spit," "bark," and "worm" all had very long language life spans.

From these, Pagel and his team were able to recreate a family tree of the seven languages.

"The very fact that we can identify these words that retain traces of their deep ancestry tells us something fundamental about our language faculties. It tells us we have this ability to transmit highly complicated and precise information from mouth to ear over tens of thousands of years," Pagel stated.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.