This editorial discusses how genomic studies are being used to understand the origins of language in humans. Researchers are attempting to pinpoint the earliest divergence in modern human populations, specifically between the Khoisan people of southern Africa and the rest, to establish a lower bound for when linguistic capacity developed – at least 135,000 years ago. The article highlights the difficulty in reconstructing very old languages, pointing out that many early languages are "known unknowables," lost to time. It acknowledges the distinction between linguistic capacity and fully formed language, suggesting the former may have predated the latter.
Information on the Great Andamanese people, their language, history, and culture, based on two decades of research. Highlights the language as a potential sixth language family of India and genetic research supporting its distinctness.
>"Three major points emerge from her research:
> Great Andamanese and Jarawa-Onge languages are class apart. (Abbi 2003)
> “We cannot rule out the possibility of multiple dispersions from Africa at different times, and also from different locations”.
> “We may also consider positing not one but two separate migrations out of Africa into the Andamans.
> The first one by the Great Andamanese 70,000 years ago and the second one by the Ang family, (perhaps around 50,000 years ago)” (Abbi 2008)"
>"Three major points emerge from her research:
> Great Andamanese and Jarawa-Onge languages are class apart. (Abbi 2003)
> “We cannot rule out the possibility of multiple dispersions from Africa at different times, and also from different locations”.
> “We may also consider positing not one but two separate migrations out of Africa into the Andamans.
> The first one by the Great Andamanese 70,000 years ago and the second one by the Ang family, (perhaps around 50,000 years ago)” (Abbi 2008)"
Thus far, Ithaca has discovered that the Athenian Decrees were written around 421 B.C.E. — these are the foundational documents of the world’s first democracy. Past conventional thinking had put their date closer to 446 B.C.E. Even the shift of just 15 years helps scholars re-contextualize these documents — now we know they were written at the same time as Athens prepared to go to war with Sparta, another Ancient Greek state that was governed as a military autocracy.
