# Oldest Language. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 14, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308 "2006-03-14T13:54:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/21 "2006-03-16T06:18:51Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] I never said “matriarchal” nor did I imply it, so to read that into my words would be to misread me. My thinking about women’s roles in prehistory does not use a matriarchal concept. Partnership society is the term I prefer. Not everyone who wants to re-examine women’s status in prehistory is a believer in matriarchy. That’s a stereotype. [/QUOTE] I’m sorry if I’ve read too much into it. It’s this that implied matriarchy to me: > [@Johanna](#): > > The way the three female singers use their voices reminds me that early shamanism was largely done by women ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/22 "2006-03-16T07:14:11Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] I’m sorry if I’ve read too much into it. It’s this that implied matriarchy to me: [/QUOTE] I picked up the same thing. What evidence is there, **Johanna** , that shamanism was largely done by women? How could we have any idea of which gender, if either, was the dominant voice in “early shamanism”? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/23 "2006-03-16T07:18:00Z")
Just one point of clarification. I didn’t see “matriarchy” in that earlier post, but I did see a claim about gender roles that made me wonder what evidence there was to back up that claim. I mention that so we don’t get hung up on “matriarchy”, which is really a strawman, **Excalibre** , even if I think I know what you’re getting at. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/24 "2006-03-16T07:28:03Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Just one point of clarification. I didn’t see “matriarchy” in that earlier post, but I did see a claim about gender roles that made me wonder what evidence there was to back up that claim. I mention that so we don’t get hung up on “matriarchy”, which is really a strawman, **Excalibre** , even if I think I know what you’re getting at. [/QUOTE] You’re right. It reminded me of that claim, but **Johanna** was not making that claim. She still suggested something that strikes me as a bit broad. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/25 "2006-03-16T08:35:26Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] I remember reading years ago that Australian Aboriginal religion was the province of men, and Aboriginal women seemed to have almost no religion. In fact, male anthropologists were only allowed to see the men’s rites. When a woman anthropologist, Diane Bell, got with Aboriginal women, she produced a study, _Daughters of the Dreaming_, showing that of course the women have religion as much as men, _duh_. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure what this could be based on, or who is supposed to have thought that Aboriginal women seemed to have almost no religion, but that has never been the perception of anyone vaguely interested in Aboriginal religion. You entire statement especially “When a woman anthropologist, Diane Bell, got with Aboriginal women” makes it sound as though all anthropologists who studied aborigines prior to her were men. Nothing could be further form the truth. Australian Aborigines have always been widely studied by female Anthropologists, starting in the 19th century with Daisy Bates, the most famous of all Anthropologists to study Aborigines. And her anthropological involvement produced an unbroken line of female anthropologists studying Aborigines. So I really question your claim that someone somewhere ever thought that Aboriginal women seemed to have almost no religion. I also question your claim that if such a belief did exist it was the result of some sort of exclusive access by male anthropologists. The fact is that the religious practices of Aboriginal women has been well known, widely documented and AFAIK universally accepted for over 120 years. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/26 "2006-03-16T08:52:43Z")
Australian Aborigines. To get back to the OP, I’ve heard and read that Aboriginal culture had remained pretty much unchanged for 20,000 or so years. Is it not possible, then, that their language would be the oldest still spoken in the world? Or for that matter, what about Native Americans? All the various tribal languages probably came from just a few root languages that passed through the Bering Strait cultural bottleneck 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Does, say, Cherokee, which is still learned and spoken, have direct ties to, or common elements with, the language spoken by Russian Yakutsk? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/27 "2006-03-16T09:35:16Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] Australian Aborigines. To get back to the OP, I’ve heard and read that Aboriginal culture had remained pretty much unchanged for 20,000 or so years. [/quote] The first thing to realise is that there is no more an Aboriginal culture than there is a Caucasian culture or a Negro culture. Yiouare referring to a populatuon that occupied an entire continent and utilised hundreds of different languages. Ther was and is no one culture. > [@](#): > > Is it not possible, then, that their language would be the oldest still spoken in the world? No more than it is possible that French is the oldest language still spoken, and for the same reason. Languages change primarily for internal reasons. Vowels shift, construction alters. There is no more reason to believe that any Aboriginal language is any closer to the dialect spoken 200 years ago than French is to Latin. Exactly the same applies to any langauge. Languages change. you don’t need any external influences, languages simply evolve from internal modification. There is a school of though that changing language is biogically implanted in human populations. It seems to be universal to humanity that adolescents,and especially adolescent boys, will invent novel words and speech patterns. Any words or patterns created by this process that are useful are adopted into the language and inevitably lead to change. Even with standardised education we can see this in modern English where constructions like “ain’t” and “ok” slip into common use depsite concerted efforts to pevent it. In pre-literate societies such changes seem to occur even faster. It is speculated that this process allows langauiges to become more effiicent and better adapted to the changing environments. However it also means that no langauge is likely to be intelligible to people living in the same area more than 2000 years later. As a result asking what language is the oldest is pretty pointless. Aside from some Creoles all a languages are equally old. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/28 "2006-03-16T14:38:43Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] Australian Aborigines. To get back to the OP, I’ve heard and read that Aboriginal culture had remained pretty much unchanged for 20,000 or so years. Is it not possible, then, that their language would be the oldest still spoken in the world? [/QUOTE] Their _languages_. Australian aborigines speak dozens of different languages, and we haven’t even ironed out the relationships between all of them. So no, it’s not even remotely posible. The Australian languages have clearly diverged a good deal, to the point that whatever original connections existed among them have grown so old and faint that we haven’t even found them. I’m not sure where you get the idea that they went to Australia and then did nothing for the next twenty thousand years (did they all just get really lazy all of a sudden sometime in 12000 BC?), but the suggestion that they’re still talking the same way as they did twenty thousand years ago is frankly a ridiculous idea - human languages do not simply stop changing in that way. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/29 "2006-03-16T16:42:45Z")
Not just the lanugage, but the culture. How would we determine that the culture was static for 20,000 years? I don’t even know what that means. AFAIK, there is no evidence of a native civilization having been developed in Austrlalia, but that hardly means there was no cultural change. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/30 "2006-03-16T17:37:04Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Not just the lanugage, but the culture. How would we determine that the culture was static for 20,000 years? I don’t even know what that means. AFAIK, there is no evidence of a native civilization having been developed in Austrlalia, but that hardly means there was no cultural change. [/QUOTE] Definitely. The claim that their culture is unchanged after all that time seems equally ridiculous to me, but I’m no anthropologist so I didn’t want to say anything about that. To surmise that since they have relatively primitive technology that Australian Aborigines don’t have much _culture_ or that their culture is somehow “lost in time” to me smacks of a very limited understanding of the world and frankly a good deal of Eurocentrism. Which I’m not accusing **Ogre** of - but I certainly wonder where he heard such nonsense in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/31 "2006-03-16T17:58:32Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] Definitely. The claim that their culture is unchanged after all that time seems equally ridiculous to me, but I’m no anthropologist so I didn’t want to say anything about that. To surmise that since they have relatively primitive technology that Australian Aborigines don’t have much _culture_ or that their culture is somehow “lost in time” to me smacks of a very limited understanding of the world and frankly a good deal of Eurocentrism. Which I’m not accusing **Ogre** of - but I certainly wonder where he heard such nonsense in the first place. [/QUOTE] Dunno where I heard it now. It was probably literally a voiceover blurb on the Discovery Channel or something. As for your insulting implication of Eurocentrism and my “limited understanding of the world,” well, what the fuck? I admittedly don’t know much about Australian Aboriginal culture. Big deal. I’ll bet you don’t know much about some things…even a few things I might find laughably basic. Oh, say, fire ecology or fluvial geomorphology. But I wouldn’t accuse you of having a “limited understanding of the world.” Not unless, of course, you were a dick about it…which I wasn’t. So do me a favor. Take your superiority and stick it…back where you got it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/32 "2006-03-16T18:05:21Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] Or for that matter, what about Native Americans? All the various tribal languages probably came from just a few root languages that passed through the Bering Strait cultural bottleneck 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Does, say, Cherokee, which is still learned and spoken, have direct ties to, or common elements with, the language spoken by Russian Yakutsk? [/QUOTE] There certainly is evidence that Native Americans came from a relatively small number of migrants from Asia. But the Americans is home to a [bewildering number of language families](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Langs_N.Amer.png), and it would be hard to know where to start. Linguists like Greenberg claim to be able to unite these languages into a 3 families and even tie them back to Asian languages, but that theory is pretty controversial (to say the least). Most linguists will say that extrapolating back 10,000 years from a modern language is impossible. OTOH, the Aleut peoples of Alaska speak a language that is related to one spoken on the other side of the Bering Straight in modern day Russia, and that is related to the Inuit languages. Keep in mind though, that these people are much more recent immigrants to the New World, and are not linguistically or ethnically related to what we usually call Native Americans or Indians. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/33 "2006-03-16T18:08:01Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] Dunno where I heard it now. It was probably literally a voiceover blurb on the Discovery Channel or something. As for your insulting implication of Eurocentrism and my “limited understanding of the world,” well, what the fuck? I admittedly don’t know much about Australian Aboriginal culture. Big deal. I’ll bet you don’t know much about some things…even a few things I might find laughably basic. Oh, say, fire ecology or fluvial geomorphology. But I wouldn’t accuse you of having a “limited understanding of the world.” Not unless, of course, you were a dick about it…which I wasn’t. So do me a favor. Take your superiority and stick it…back where you got it. [/QUOTE] With all due respect, if you “don’t know much about” something, it might not be a good idea to post about that something in GQ. Just a suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/34 "2006-03-16T18:13:14Z")
With all due respect, I was asking a series of questions, not providing factual answers. I reserve the right to ask such questions in GD, in a thread in which the questions are topical. What the hell do you expect? I also reserve the right to fire back when I receive a raking broadside suggesting my Eurocentrism or “limited understanding.” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/35 "2006-03-16T18:21:40Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] With all due respect, I was asking a series of questions, not providing factual answers. I reserve the right to ask such questions in GD, in a thread in which the questions are topical. What the hell do you expect? I also reserve the right to fire back when I receive a raking broadside suggesting my Eurocentrism or “limited understanding.” [/QUOTE] Well, I think it’s fair to give you the benefit of the doubt then, but might I suggest that you phrase your questions as real questions, and not questions that might imply some knowedge? It’s easy to read your post about Australia as being something less than just honest to goodness questions. Obviously several of us did. Note that the second part of your post didn’t generate any backlash. Do you see the difference in how those two paragraphs were worded? Again, just a suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/36 "2006-03-16T18:31:05Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] As for your insulting implication of Eurocentrism and my “limited understanding of the world,” well, what the fuck? I admittedly don’t know much about Australian Aboriginal culture. Big deal. I’ll bet you don’t know much about some things…even a few things I might find laughably basic. Oh, say, fire ecology or fluvial geomorphology. But I wouldn’t accuse you of having a “limited understanding of the world.” Not unless, of course, you were a dick about it…which I wasn’t. So do me a favor. Take your superiority and stick it…back where you got it. [/QUOTE] Gosh, it’s almost like I didn’t _explicitly_ say that I wasn’t accusing you of it - I was accusing whoever you got that from. But since you want to start a fight, I’d say that sure, there’s plenty of things I don’t know much about. Which is why I tend not to offer up random factoids like “I’ve heard and read that Aboriginal culture had remained pretty much unchanged for 20,000 or so years” that I picked up without understanding. Actually, you probably could have figured out that it was a pretty nonsensical claim on your own - after all, it’s not like we have Aboriginal Australian blog entries for the last twenty thousand years to compare. But don’t get pissy at me when I _explicitly_ stated that the problem was whatever you heard, and not some failing on your part. Though given your difficulties in understanding me, it suddenly strikes me as fairly likely that you very badly misunderstood whatever you heard. > [@Ogre](#): > > I also reserve the right to fire back when I receive a raking broadside suggesting my Eurocentrism or “limited understanding.” Then wait until someone accuses you of those things, rather than explicitly _not_ accusing you. > [@Ogre](#): > > Is it not possible, then, that their language would be the oldest still spoken in the world? Answer to your question? No. It’s not possible. [QUOTE=John Mace] OTOH, the Aleut peoples of Alaska speak a language that is related to one spoken on the other side of the Bering Straight in modern day Russia, and that is related to the Inuit languages. Keep in mind though, that these people are much more recent immigrants to the New World, and are not linguistically or ethnically related to what we usually call Native Americans or Indians. [/QUOTE] And here we go into an area where I’ve only “heard things” and “read stuff” - but my understanding was that Eskimos moved _back_ to Siberia from the New World. Is that incorrect? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/37 "2006-03-16T18:38:12Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] And here we go into an area where I’ve only “heard things” and “read stuff” - but my understanding was that Eskimos moved _back_ to Siberia from the New World. Is that incorrect? [/QUOTE] I think there has been back and forth migration all along, at least from the Aleutian Islands. But are you saying the Inuit are derived from Amerinds and then migrated back to Russia? I had never heard that, but it seems implausible. Where is Nanuk when we need hiim? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/38 "2006-03-16T21:02:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, I think it’s fair to give you the benefit of the doubt then, but might I suggest that you phrase your questions as real questions, and not questions that might imply some knowedge? It’s easy to read your post about Australia as being something less than just honest to goodness questions. See, I don’t understand this at all. What kind of suspicion-filled world do you live in where “I’ve heard X. Is Y therefore possible?” sets off alarm bells? I have no agenda, man. Sheesh. > [@](#): > > Which is why I tend not to offer up random factoids like “I’ve heard and read that Aboriginal culture had remained pretty much unchanged for 20,000 or so years” that I picked up without understanding. Do you not understand that this statement is not a factoid? I _did_ hear it. And what in the world is wrong with posting it, then following it up with a question that addresses its very validity? See, here’s what you say: “Ogre, I’m not sure where you heard that factoid, but it’s not true. Australian Aborigines have hundreds of social groups that developed independently, therefore hundreds of cultures, and hundreds of languages. Therefore, there’s no single “aboriginal language” that we can trace back to being the oldest still in use in the world.” > [@](#): > > But don’t get pissy at me when I explicitly stated that the problem was whatever you heard, and not some failing on your part. Then I apologize. I read it as a rather disingenuous disclaimer. “I’m not accusing Ogre of this, but geez. Get real, man.” I was mistaken. > [@](#): > > And here we go into an area where I’ve only “heard things” and “read stuff” - but my understanding was that Eskimos moved back to Siberia from the New World. Is that incorrect? No. In fact, I find the whole idea Eurocen…oh, we’re past that? Sorry. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/39 "2006-03-16T21:44:59Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] Then I apologize. I read it as a rather disingenuous disclaimer. “I’m not accusing Ogre of this, but geez. Get real, man.” I was mistaken. [/QUOTE] Then don’t bite my head off for saying it - I wouldn’t have said it unless I meant it. It’s obviously not your fault if the Discovery Channel vastly distorted something they reported - that’s the way the popular press tends to work with science. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308/40 "2006-03-17T02:41:26Z")
Ice Age shamanesses can be identified from their burials as for example at Dolní Věstonice. The shamaness’s burial site also has the earliest known pottery kiln. Cite: Barbara Tedlock, [_The Woman in the Shaman’s Body_](http://www.barbaratedlock.com/) (New York: Bantam Books, 2005). Tedlock asks why anthropology has assumed that prehistoric shamans were always men, when archaeology indicates otherwise. She presents a case in her book that anthropology has been too slow to openly acknowledge the role of women in shamanism, in the present as well as prehistory. She gives an example from the field. A husband and wife were partners in shamanism. They told an anthropologist that they were both shamans. The anthropologist wrote that they were “a shaman” (meaning the man) “and assistant” (his wife). It’s like when a woman goes for a loan and the loan officer puts her husband’s name at the top without even asking. Women are still having this happen to them in the present day, I’ve heard plenty of instances of this myself from women. These are examples of what I mean by male bias. Diane Bell writes in _Daughters of the Dreaming_ about women’s ritual activities that have been mistakenly ascribed to men. Specifically, she studied the Warlpiri, Warumungu/Warlmanpa, Kaytej, and Alyawarra cultures at a place called Warrabri in the Central region of the Northern Territory. She said the women there who got to know and trust her were not much impressed with white women’s feminism. Rather, they believed their contributions to their own culture in a distinctively female role needed more acknowledgement. Bell also found that just being a woman wasn’t enough to earn their trust. “After a year of working with these Kaytej women, I was told the reason I was trusted with women’s secrets was that I didn’t talk to men. Unlike other white women I did not deem it necessary to check out their story with a male for confirmation or correction.” (.p 33) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-language/348308.md?page=3)