Is it possible to reconstruct the sound of the very first language spoken? Compare Chinese with English, or an American Indian dialect with one spoken in New Guinea, and there would seem to be no connection in terms of vocabulary or grammar. Yet there is growing agreement among linguists, archaeologists and geneticists that all our societies are descended from one group of humans who spoke one original language.
Horizon examines the recent findings that have established links between the world's
5,000 languages and made it possible to discover 20 or more words that may have been spoken by the first humans. Producers Christopher Hale and Karl Sabbagh
Series editor Jana Bennett
A Skyscraper production for BBCtv
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