Humanity spoke thousands of languages at the dawn of farming — now many of them are lost

Humanity might have spoken tens of thousands of languages between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago, which have dwindled down to the around 7,500 unique languages used today. Researchers estimate that the number of spoken languages ballooned starting at the end of the last glacial period, as humans moved from hunter-gatherer groups into agricultural communities. After peaking around 2,000 years ago, the number began to fall again, possibly because of the spread of powerful, monolingual cultural groups through conquest and trade.