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by skowalak 554 days ago
It can imply isolation, but not necessarily. It is also possible that there are some precursor languages, of which no evidence could be found (yet). Another good example are the Koreanic languages of which modern Korean is a member.

The Ket language of central Siberia has long been believed to be isolate, but was later classified as a member of the Dene–Yeniseian language family (or at least proposed, afaik this research is still ongoing).
1 comments
Loughla 554 days ago
That's fair, but also just as interesting. What are the chances that language is older than we thought? And if decent chances, how much older? Were early hominids capable of speaking?

Wild to think about.

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0points 552 days ago
> What are the chances that language is older than we thought?

This find is about a script in an unknown language.

The question about how old spoken languages are is of course unrelated and can't be answered since it predates history ;-)

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