They both mutate and face extinctions.
By Greg Rosner
Languages: There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken today. About half of them may not exist in 25 years. But to think about a language as a static thing is wrong. This is the natural consequence of cultures being absorbed by larger (more savage or technologically advanced – take your pick) neighbors over thousands of years of human migration. These family/tribe/nation absorptions and/or exterminations of people have lead to some languages being spoken today by only one or two people on earth. (See my last blog on the death of Boa Sr, the last speaker of the Bo language.) Some language extinctions, considering the last forty thousand years of our shared human history, have happened by adoption, by force, by conquest, and by whole populations dying in regional isolation. (Sad – but true.)
DNA: While all humans have 99.9% the exact same DNA, that point one percent carries billions of variations which make up all our different physical (and possibly other) traits as humans. According to modern genetic biologists, those differences have been mutating and diverging in modern humans for only about 150,000 years. All other hominids which existed on earth before and during this time, have all died out. It seems from the fossil record and from the DNA evidence, that all hominids died out 60,000 years ago, with the exception of a small population of humans living in eastern Africa, some 65,000 years ago. Language and DNA are similar in that they evolve, mutate and in many cases, die out.
We all know that since humans have populated the world, we have created civilizations, spread religions, fashioned languages, waged war on each other and died of all kinds of pandemics. But what I learned from my personal participation in the Genographic Project, (a joint effort between National Geographic and IBM to map the history of human DNA) was that many of these events have left a certain evidence in our DNA just as they have left sounds in our shared languages. All of this points to common ancestors as they migrated from East Africa, across every landscape imaginable on earth. Leading linguistic historians are now in agreement with the genetic biologists about how humans have migrated across the planet over the past 50,000 years.
While this continued extinction of about 3,500 spoken languages by 2035 seems inevitable, it is critical (and possible) that the details of these languages can be recorded and saved, else they too will be lost forever from the record. At the University of London, in the School of Oriental and African Studies, they are soon to be hosting “Endangered Languages Week 2010” who’s purpose is to present a variety of displays, discussions, films, and workshops to provide a view of what is happening to languages and what is being done to document, archive and support endangered languages around the world. The Endangered Languages Project seeks to “provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community”.
Language, like DNA, changes: When populations of people live in isolation for long periods of time, (say, a thousand years) their language changes and so does their DNA. It’s these tiny changes in DNA which allow genetic biologists like Dr. Spencer Wells of the Genographic Project to theorize about how populations of people have migrated across the earth over time.
While languages and DNA change with different rates of time, it has been natural for both to evolve and adapt into amazing differences. Take written and spoken Spanish in Latin America and Spanish in Spain, for example. Clearly, Spain did some conquesting south of the equator where they have deposited a good deal of their language some 400 years ago. And in those 400 years, the Spanish language diverged, in terms of the sound and written form. Its grammar, syntax and style changed as people were separated by distance and the time it takes to travel across the ocean. You can even see this divergence of language between the US and its first major colonizer – England, with how we spell certain words. And to think that this divergence is only about three grandfathers old (234 years) is amazing.
What I learned from my DNA Test: In exchange for $99 and a cotton small skin-scrap of my inner cheek, The Genographic Project emailed me a PDF file showing details of my Y Chromosome (Male lineage) inheritance of Haplogroup J2. I discovered that encoded in my blood is a document which can with the same certainty prove that I am the father of my son, prove how my ancient fathers and grandfathers (so to speak) migrated from the Mediterranean, and before that, the land which is considered today to be Iraq and Uzbekistan. And their great grandfathers migrated up from East Africa 40,000 years ago.
And since we’re on the topic of human evolution, I thought I would mention this fascinating article on the “Origins of Charles Darwin”. His great-great grandson Chris Darwin, (who is alive today and pictured here with a map of his families migration path) also participated in the Genographic Project recently and found out something that Charles would have never imagined. Chris’ results show that Darwin’s male ancestors would have migrated out of northeast Africa to the Middle East or North Africa around 45,000 years ago and belongs to Haplogroup R1b.” He’s a direct descendant “of the Cro-Magnon people who, beginning 30,000 years ago, dominated the human expansion into Europe and heralded the demise of the Neanderthal species.”
To think about all the languages that may have once existed, and how they were used to convey all the pains, knowledge and joys of our ancestors. And to think of what it sounded for my ancient grandmother to talk with her parents. It’s a humbling consideration and I do hope that the Endangered Languages Project is successful in recording as many languages as possible. I think this scientific research will help educate us all of us about who we are as a species and where we’ve come from.
Speaking of fathers and sons, my son made this poster for his recent school project. I thought it would be appropriate to show here given this post.
