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

The world's oldest known system of writing was influenced by symbols used for trade — engravings found on cylinders used in the exchange of farming produce and textiles, a new study suggests. The ...

IN A CHURCH hewn out of a mountainside, just over a thousand years or so ago, a monk was struggling with a passage in Latin. He did what others like him have done, writing the tricky bits in his own ...

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

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, ...

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 ...

Inscriptions found on a 2000-year-old metal hand may be written in a language related to modern-day Basque. If this interpretation is correct, it could help explain the origins of the Basque language ...

For thousands of years, spoken language has set humans apart from all other species. The ability to convey complex ideas, ...

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. By Martin Puchner THE GREATEST INVENTION A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts By Silvia ...

Researchers investigating how the first writing arose identified the motifs on preliterate "cylinder seals" used in the trade of agricultural products and textiles. When you purchase through links on ...