UC BERKELEY (US) — A new computer program can rapidly reconstruct “proto-languages”—the linguistic ancestors from which all modern languages have evolved.
Ancient languages hold a treasure trove of information about the culture, politics, and commerce of millennia past. Yet, reconstructing them to reveal clues into human history can require decades of painstaking work.
These earliest-known languages include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Afroasiatic and, in this case, Proto-Austronesian, which gave rise to languages spoken in Southeast Asia, parts of continental Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific.