Linguists Estimate “Proto-Australian” is 10,000 Years Old

CALLAGHAN, AUSTRALIA—According to a BBC News report, a new study has traced all of Australia’s indigenous languages back to a single, common language known as Proto-Australian, spoken some 10,000 years ago. Mark Harvey of the University of Newcastle and Robert Mailhammer of Western Sydney University say the languages spread from a small area in northern Australia, where the greatest diversity in language is found. Harvey, Mailhammer, and their colleagues searched for recurrent and systematic traits in the sounds of words among the 120 surviving indigenous languages, and found them in the basic vocabularies spoken by people who lived as much as 60 miles apart. It “makes it very unlikely that they are the results of chance or [subsequent] language contact,” Mailhammer said. But the study results are not a good fit with the current understanding of how the first Australians spread across the continent. “So there are still lots of questions about how we understand the prehistory of Australia,” said Harvey. To read about another discovery in Australia, go to “Death by Boomerang.”