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To: SunkenCiv
the Ural family languages were built from a single proto-language 6000-4000 years old

What language was spoken 7000 years ago? Back then, did humans speak or did they just grunt? If they spoke, what happened to their language, that is was replaced by the "Ural family of languages?"

4 posted on 10/18/2018 11:03:26 PM PDT by Cowboy Bob ("Other People's Money" = The life blood of Liberalism)
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To: Cowboy Bob

What, exactly, is a proto-language?


5 posted on 10/18/2018 11:04:31 PM PDT by Cowboy Bob ("Other People's Money" = The life blood of Liberalism)
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To: Cowboy Bob

7000 years ago was the day before yesterday.


6 posted on 10/18/2018 11:08:09 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Cowboy Bob

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_millennium_BC


8 posted on 10/18/2018 11:09:15 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Cowboy Bob; BenLurkin; ZULU; babble-on
As BenLurkin and ZULU said, proto-languages are figured out from existing languages which have common roots, as the Indo-European languages do. They either went unrecorded, thus were prehistoric, or, possibly, they did have existence in written form, but whatever was used to write on has disappeared. Various writing systems that existed as late as the Middle Ages use an overlapping symbol set and can be found among the cave paintings, but obviously there's very little likelihood something as old and rare as that will ever be figured out.

Old English sounds like modern spoken German to our ears, but isn't modern spoken German -- English and German have a fairly recent (<2000 year old) common root, yet that common root is no longer spoken.

16 posted on 10/19/2018 12:22:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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