I will say "Devanagari" is the oldest language of the world. But some people said its Vedic Sanskrit. Still have some doubts in between those two.
Touched on this previously I think, if you believe the bible then we will most likely never know as during the building of the tower of babel god confounded the languages and made many different. It is possible that he may have allowed some to remain the master language or perhaps it is a lost language and everyone was simply seperated to new languages. Depends what you believe.
My best off-hand guess would be Sumerian as they established the first known human civilization and form of symbol exchange that we would recognize as a language. However, we cannot ignore the fact that both Neanderthal and Cro-magnon man had larger brain cases than modern humans; and were possibly more intelligent. Researchers have sicne decoded some of the Neanderthal genome and discovered the presence of the T-gene, which is believed to be related to language. Well over 100,000 years ago, developing humans possessed voice boxes low enough in the throat to produce sounds similar to those we use today.
In reality nobody has a clue.
The earliest remains found to date put the rise of modern man at around 200 to 300 thousand years ago. They no doubt had some form of a language given that they had the capacity to think and make sounds.
We also know that Neanderthal lived at the same time as modern man, they even interbred and today roughly 4% of our DNA originated from them, they probably had some form of language as well.
Modern man was predated by 19 earlier "versions" of man. Some of those probably had some form of a language as well. (Kinda blows the whole Adam and Eve idea out of the water as to being the first people.) Now you are back over 4 million years.
When people today ask what was the earliest language they tend to forget all of this. But you have to start by defining what you want to accept as a language. These ancients didn't keep written languages but neither do many of today's more primitive cultures, that doesn't mean that they don't have languages.
There is little if any doubt that by 150,000 years ago people had complex and varied languages and even that is being rather arrogant in saying that languages didn't exist before that time line.
In all probability they weren't all that different from languages spoken today. The ancients left very little in the way of evidence, humans don't tend to be very good candidates for fossils but we find the occasional bits and pieces and we find tools and other things they used. Sadly they didn't invent the tape recorder so we will never know what it sounded like to live among them.
But there is no logical reason to think that they didn't have complex and regionally varied languages just as we do today.
If we accept the bible as an authority then one must believe that Hebrew was the first language.
Probably Sumerian but most definitely it would be somewhere in the middle east and a Semitic language
by Mahaveer Sanglikar 11 years ago
What is the oldest living language of the world?
by v madhavan 13 years ago
i waht the list of oldest languages in the world.
by daledad8 13 years ago
Was the "Tongues" spoken of in the Bible the same as they are today?Many Churches teach that speaking in tongues is a manifestation of speaking to angels. However, in gthe Bible when the Holy Spirit came upon those gathered in the upper room, they spoke actual languages; foreign languages...
by Castlepaloma 13 years ago
Early Americans did not share the blind faith of today's fundamentalists. Faith" is a fine invention, with some skepticism. But can science and scripture live happily together without fighting. What story do you prefer no.1 or no. 21. There is all kinds of evidence for dinosaurs. We also have...
by just_curious 13 years ago
Someone told me today about someone speaking in tongues in their church on Sunday. I'm rather dubious of this. Are there any Christians here who have seen this? What's it all about?I always assumed 'tongues' referred to when the apostles spoke other languages. I know there is a point in...
by Knight6 12 years ago
why is it that every time humans turn to their repective gods it is usally as a result of some form of emtion sad happy guilt etc.."if you believe in light it is because of darkness,if you believe in joy it is because of sadnessand if you believe in god it is because of the...
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |