Whilst we tend to talk about the stories behind stories on this channel, I thought I’d dive into
something I thought was fascinating, based on a paper written almost eight years ago now.
And this is the discovery of ultra-conserved words in our language, and what this means is
that there are instances of words discovered in separate languages that appear to be the
same and which may have roots going back to the last ice age, and so over 15,000 years old.
So welcome to the story of the oldest words of the Eurasians, and welcome to Crecganford.
Language change over time, due to influences such as migrations, war, or the coming together
of cultures, and as such that the more time goes on the more language changes,
and the more difficult it is to trace a path back to our oldest languages and our oldest words.
To some extent we are lucky with the Proto-Indo Europeans, when we have a
culture with such a strong impact, that many who encountered them wanted to interact with them,
and that was a key in how the language spread so successfully.
And this has led us to understanding which stories derived from the time this language was spoken,
due to being able to track the language similarities across the Indo-European geographic
landscape. However, going back in time past the Proto-Indo Europeans is incredibly challenging,
as language and words older than 5,000 to 9,000 years are difficult to identify due to all the
influences. Although that has not stopped some researchers trying to understand if there was a
common language before the Proto-Indo Europeans. And this research into whether there was an
older language was approached using math, or more precisely statistics with quantitative modelling,
which in brief is a method that allows us to understand whether
a difference between two things is significant. So in very simplified terms, for this research,
are two words statistically similar or not. And if this modelling is applied to some ultra-conserved
words, which, simply put, are words with common properties between two different sources,
then it may show that this commonality is actually the result of a deeper relationship between the
words, in effect, that they have a common ancestor. So why do this? Why do researchers
think that there was a common ancestor language on the Eurasian continents before
the Proto-Indo Europeans? Well, most language evolution theory is based on cognate words,
so words that show a structural evolution into others through consistent adaptations
by a culture or region. But such cognates and their evolution can suffer from phonetic erosion,
and over a period of time such as 9,000 years, then that needs to be considered, as such erosion
could change words completely. This makes the statistical verification of any changes form a
cognate perspective difficult to validate, as the results would show a probability of
being no better than a chance change, meaning we can not be sure of the evolution of a
word using cognates if it is over 9,000 years old. However, these cognate challenges can be mitigated
if the words sound the same, which is rare in many words, with the average word being replaced
by a new non-cognate word every 2,000 to 4,000 years, but some words, such as numerals,
pronouns, and some adverbs, are replaced more slowly because of their frequent use, and may
only change once every 10,000 to 20,000 years. Now the advantage of these later words is that
they can be predicted independent of their sound, and this is by using the frequency a word is used
in everyday speech in Indo-European languages, along with its part in a sentence construction,
and then it can be predicted how rapidly it would evolve, as frequency and there part in
sentence construction is consistent, irrespective of language, across the Eurasia, and even
into North America. And this finding shows that humans use a core set of words in everyday speech
at the same frequency and show the possibility that irrespective of the language or location,
each type of word evolve at similar rates across these. Then, using this, it provides
us with a statistical framework for predicting words likely to show a deep ancestry amongst
languages whose relationships extend well beyond 9,000 years. And the result of research using this
quantitative modelling is that the following words we use today, were probably in use,
in a similar form just after the last ice age, around 14,500 to 15,000 years ago.
There are the number words, but also these common words; “thou”, “I”, “not”, ”that”, ”we”, ”who”, ”this”, ”what”,
and ”ye”. Which we can link cognitively as well. Then other frequently used words such as: “To say”,
“day”, and “to know”. But also some infrequently used words come back as statistically likely to be
from the post-ice age period, including: “bark”, “ashes”, “worm”. Now one of these may infer some
significant importance in these words, and this is because the word worm fascinates me,
as it can also mean snake or serpent, and so could be important as this could be related
to serpent and the common dragon myths that the Proto-Indo Europeans have. And whilst it is
next to impossible to know for sure, to think that the dragon myth may have been an important part
of culture post-ice age, suggests that elements of the creation myth maybe as 15,000 years old.
But that is pure supposition at the moment, but a fascinating one from my interest in creation
myths. So what can we conclude from this study? Well the fact is that it does seem probable
that words we use today have originated from a post-Ice Age language on the Eurasian continent,
but where? Well the data from this research allows us to build up a phylogenetic tree of Eurasiatic
languages to see when language spread from a source around 15,000 years ago. And at this time
it looks that around the North West of India and Pakistan, the language started
to change to develop the first split known as Proto-Dradivian around 15,000 years ago.
Then at 12,500 years ago another branch, the Proto-Kartvelian came into existence,
followed by splits into Proto-Indo European and Proto-Uralic at 12,000 years ago.
The other stem from this split, at 10,500 years ago enough change happened to develop the
Proto-Altaric branch of language, and the final branch discovered, came from here as language
moved across what is now Russia and across into North America, around 10,000 years ago,
which would coincide with a land bridge of ice made by the Younger Dryas event
about 11,500 years ago. And this developed branches called the Proto-Inuit Yupik language,
and the other Proto-Chukchi-Kamchatkan. And from this we can infer that the language
started from the area we know as Kazakhstan today. And that is the story behind some of the
oldest words we know today. I hope you found that interesting, and I’ll put a link to a useful paper
if you wish to read more about this in the description below. And so until the next video,
please stay safe, stay well. And this was Crecganford.