A Tower's Long Tale

It's hard for me to suggest to anyone that they really should read Calvert Watkins' essay on the Indo-European language group, but if you're feeling adventurous, I recommend you at least give it a scan. Basically, Watkins discusses the idea that the vast majority of modern languages derive from the common tongue of one ancient people. Think of it as verbal evolution. This is idea is held by the majority of linguists.

If you read Watkins' essay, or if you trust me implicitly, you'll note that the Indo-European (IE) root stock is traced back in time to several thousand years BC. The most common date range assigned to the known existence of the mother tongue is around 2000-3000BC. Several derivative, daughter languages are firmly dated 1500 to 2000BC. There is also general agreement as to the location of this mother-tongue culture. The name says it all, Indo (as in India) and European (as in, don't make me do this, Europe). The IE origin language-culture spread from some central point in time and place and spread out from there. If you were to visit your favorite cartographer's shoppe and ask for him to point to a place, oh say, between India and Europe, he would take his long wooden pointy thing and whack the parchment smack dab in what we call the Middle East, home of present day Iran, Iraq, etc.

Now this get's my attention, because back in elementary school, one of my favorite words was Mesopotamia. I liked it for two reasons. One, because it sounded funnier if you said "mess o' potatoes", but also because the word was a description meso (middle / between) + potamia (the rivers - potable water). Mesopotamia was the "cradle of civilization" springing up between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq (ancient Babylon) - in fact, in the very plain where Baghdad is today.

Now also back in elementary days, I learned a fantastic story about a tower built in Babylon. In fact, the name Babylon (well attested and not challenged by anyone as to its existence) derives from the tower built in that area - Babel (as discussed in the Bible's book of Genesis, chapters 10-11). Now, many people object to taking the Bible literally and certainly many, many people object to taking the first 11 chapters of Genesis literally. Hey, this blog is NOT about theological debate so, lean (like another famous tower) whichever way you like on the finer points of theology / Bible history.

But isn't this interesting. Calvert Watkins and his colleagues have determined that most modern languages derive from a specific time and place that, as legend has it, was famous as the time and place where one group of people had a common language until their one language became multi-lingual and all the people of that time and place spread out from there to the uttermost parts of the earth. I'd say that there's some awfully strong circumstantial evidence to reckon with here. The Tower of Babel may be just the opening chapter of a long and beautiful biography of hundreds of languages flowing out upon the surface of earth.