(…) In research published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude and Andrew Meade attempt to identify words shared among Eurasia’s major language families — implying that they may be relics of an older common tongue. Most words have a “half-life,” meaning there’s 50 per cent chance they’ll be replaced by a new noncognate word every 2,000 to 4,000 words. But some words — particularly numerals, pronouns and adverbs — tend to last longer.

Using a database of hypothesized ancestor words, the authors looked for words related by sound within the language groups. (An example: The Latin pater is obviously related to the English father.) They found “188 word-meanings for which one or more proto-words had been reconstructed for at least three language families.”

The following list of words had cognates within four of the language families: Thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm.

For the most part, commonly used words seem to decay more slowly, though comparatively rare words such as “spit,” “bark” and “worm” seem to be exceptions. The authors say the connections among these words provide evidence of a Eurasian “linguistic superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around 15,000 years ago — slightly before the beginning of the Holocene era.”

See: The Record

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