BarcelonaHumans once spoke as many as 75,000 languages, a study finds.
Researchers led by Damián Blasi modeled diversity from 171 hunter-gatherer groups and found it peaked 3,000 to 1,000 years ago, then collapsed as empires and later colonial states spread a handful of languages.
Roughly 7,500 languages remain today, the study notes, as dominant tongues keep pushing others toward extinction.
Sources: 404 Media