Study finds 'mother of all language : All the world's languages may date back to a single 'mother tongue' spoken in pre-historic Africa, according to new research.
Study finds 'mother of all languages' The study suggests that between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago humans spoke in a single dialect that proved the catalyst for human civilisation. The report by Dr Quentin Atkinson from The University of Auckland in New Zealand is based on phonemes - distinct sounds such as vowels and consonants that make up language. He analysed the number of phonemes found in 504 world languages, and hypothesized that languages with the most phonemes were the oldest. Also, the dialects furthest away from the 'mother tongue' were found to be less complicated. The study found that some of Africa's languages (which feature clicks) have over a 100 phonemes, while Hawaiian - spoken on the furthest point on the migration route out of Africa, only has 13. In short, the further away from Africa you get, the fewer phonemes are found. Effectively then, Dr. Atkinson argues that the sub-Saharan region of Africa is the cradle of all human language. This fits with what scientists call the 'Out of Africa' theory - that early humans evolved only in this region, then migrated to the rest of the world around 70,000- 50,000 years ago, the period mentioned in the study. "It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of," Dr. Atkinson told the Wall Street Journal..... what Dr Quentin Atkinson has stumbled upon is nothing but the whole Bible truth in Genisis 11 At first,the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words. As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Baylonia and settled there. They said to one another, “come on! let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together. They said, “Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.” Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, and he said, “Now then these are all one people and they speak one language, this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another.” So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. The city was called Babylon, because there the Lord mixed up the languages of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the earth. Michael Fernandes.
