BARCELONA — A study published in the journal Science on July 23, 2026, reconstructed humanity's linguistic diversity since the dawn of agriculture. The research, led by Damián Blasi of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, revealed that the number of languages spoken worldwide peaked significantly before undergoing a sharp decline.

Researchers developed a model to estimate historical language diversity based on data from 171 hunter-gatherer groups. This approach allowed the team to trace the trajectory of human speech patterns over thousands of years, providing a quantitative framework for understanding how languages emerge and vanish.

The findings indicate that humans spoke approximately 4,500 to 6,200 languages before the dawn of agriculture around 12,000 years ago. At that time, the global human population is estimated to have been between 4.4 million and 7 million people. The study notes that it would take 500 to 1,000 years for the languages of a split population to become distinct.

Linguistic diversity peaked between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago with an estimated 20,000 to 75,000 languages spoken worldwide. Blasi said the model revealed a linguistic 'golden age' with tens of thousands of languages 3,000 to 1,000 years ago. In our model, this 'golden age' was followed by an extremely rapid decrease in linguistic diversity, especially over the last two millennia.

The decline in linguistic diversity began at least 1,000 years ago due to the formation of multinational empires. Agricultural intensification and the rise of nation-states such as the Roman and Greek empires contributed to language loss. Writing emerged in the past 6,000 years among only a subset of languages, further altering the landscape of human communication.

The spread of colonialism over the past 500 years accelerated language loss through the rise of dominant languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi. Today, approximately 7,500 languages are spoken globally. Half of the languages spoken today are endangered, and approximately four languages disappear every year.

Claire Bowern, a linguist at Yale University, commented on the scale of the historical peak. She described it as the golden age of linguistic diversity and noted the contrast between the past and present demographics.

At the start of the modeling 12,000 years ago, there were roughly 5,000 languages for 6 million people, Bowern said. At the end point, there are 7,500 languages for 8 billion people.

The study suggests that cultural variants with transmission dynamics similar to those of languages have undergone a recent mass extinction. Blasi explained the connection between language and broader cultural traits. He said languages are often used as proxies for other cultural units because they are transmitted alongside practices such as marriage patterns, religious beliefs, kinship systems, and social organization, implying that similar cultural variants have also faced mass extinction.

Chiara Barbieri is a geneticist studying language diversity at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy. The research titled 'The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene' provides a detailed account of these shifts. The model shows the rapid changes in recent millennia compared to the slower diversification of earlier human history.