Ancient written languages emerged as a revolutionary development in human history, allowing civilizations to record important ...

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this story contained inaccurate or incomplete facts about the history of language. Language is an essential part of human communication, allowing ...

A study on Indo-European languages, using direct linguistic data, reconciles the two dominant hypotheses of where and how ...

This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists, guest essays and more seasonal distractions. IN 1786 WILLIAM JONES, a British civil servant in Calcutta, told ...

Language is one of the most powerful links between past and present, carrying culture, tradition, and history across centuries. While thousands of languages have disappeared, some have endured for ...

Where lies the origin of the Indo-European language family? Researchers contribute a new piece to this puzzle. They analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from archaeological sites across Eurasia ...

Thousands of years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers roamed the steppes of southern Russia, fishing in its rivers and hunting across its vast grasslands. They lived in a world without settlements, ...