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The Voynich manuscript, folio 67r. Image credit: Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Historically Plausible Cipher Recreates Statistical Signature of Voynich Manuscript

Jan 6, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

The Voynich manuscript — often called the most mysterious manuscript in the world — has eluded attempts to understand its origin, nature, and...

Klingons at San Diego Comic-Con 2014. Image credit: Chris Favero / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Klingon and Other Conlangs are Processed by Same Brain Mechanisms as Natural Languages: Study

Mar 18, 2025 by News Staff

What constitutes a language has been of interest to diverse disciplines — from philosophy and linguistics to psychology, anthropology, and sociology....

C.D. Spiteri et al discovered widespread evidence of prehistoric milk production in southern Europe. Image credit: Samuel Daniell.

Ancient DNA Study Sheds New Light on History of Indo-European Languages

Feb 5, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists from the University of Vienna and Harvard University have analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from Eurasian archaeological sites...

This side of a commemorative plate mounted on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft features U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Scientists Unveil Design for Europa Clipper’s ‘Golden Record’

Mar 12, 2024 by News Staff

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a triangular metal plate with a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter’s...

Global distribution of MSIs across 9,179 language varieties from the ASJP database. Color of dots represents the MSI of the language, with redder dots indicating higher and bluer dots indicating lower indices. The fill color of land areas represents the mean annual temperature. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad384.

Climate Plays Role in Shaping Evolution of Human Languages, New Study Reveals

Dec 5, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Sounds of human languages can be affected by various factors of the natural environment. One such factor is the mean annual temperature. In new research,...

Coventry et al. show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. Image credit: Coventry et al., doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01697-4.

Study: All Languages around the World Have Words for ‘This’ and ‘That’

Nov 2, 2023 by News Staff

In new research, scientists from the University of East Anglia and elsewhere studied 874 speakers of 29 different languages, including English, Spanish,...

The language network in native speakers of diverse languages. Image credit: Malik-Moraleda et al., doi: 10.1038/s41593-022-01114-5.

New Study Across 45 Languages Reveals Universal Language Network

Jul 19, 2022 by News Staff

In a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, neuroscientists from MIT and Harvard University evaluated the claim of language universality...

A Minoan clay tablet inscribed with Linear A, which is on display in Crete’s Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. Image credit: Ester Salgarella.

Scientists One Step Closer to Cracking Minoan Linear A Script

Feb 8, 2021 by News Staff

Linear A is a logo-syllabic script used for administrative purposes on Bronze Age Crete. Together with Cretan Hieroglyphic, it is one of two writing systems...

Reconstruction of Paranthropus boisei (Nachosan / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Building Blocks of Language Evolved at least 40 Million Years before Language Itself, Study Shows

Oct 22, 2020 by News Staff

In a new study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, apes and monkeys were able to track relationships between sounds the same way as humans,...

Men are typically described by words that refer to behavior, while adjectives ascribed to women tend to be associated with physical appearance. Image credit: StockSnap.

In Literature, Women are Beautiful and Sexy, Men are Rational and Brave

Sep 3, 2019 by News Staff

University of Copenhagen researcher Isabelle Augenstein and colleagues trawled through 3.5 million fiction and non-fiction books, all published in English...

Has Voynich Manuscript Been Decoded? Mysterious Book May Be Written in Proto-Romance Language

May 15, 2019 by News Staff

The Voynich manuscript, sometimes described as the ‘world’s most mysterious text,’ may be written in proto-Romance, a language that arose from a...

Paleolithic edge-to-edge bite (top) and a modern overbite/overjet bite (bottom) and how ‘f’ sounds are produced in a biomechanical model. Image credit: Timea Bodogan / Scott Moisik.

Post-Neolithic Diet-Induced Dental Changes Led to Introduction of ‘F’ and ‘V’ Sounds

Mar 18, 2019 by News Staff

A class of speech sounds that is now present in nearly half of the world’s languages — labiodentals, produced by positioning the lower lip against...

Gestures of our primate cousins may be more similar to our own language than previously thought. Image credit: Republica.

Chimpanzees’ Gestural Communication Follows Same Laws as Human Language: Study

Feb 14, 2019 by News Staff

According to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, gestures of chimpanzees follow the same mathematical patterns — known...

Jedek is spoken by about 280 individuals in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Image credit: Lund University.

Previously Unknown Language Emerges in Malaysia

Feb 7, 2018 by News Staff

A team of linguists from Lund University in Sweden announced this week they have identified an endangered minority language known as Jedek that is spoken...

According to Hamrick et al, language is learned, in specific ways, by general-purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that pre-exist Homo sapiens. This image shows functional areas of the human brain; dashed areas shown are commonly left hemisphere dominant. Image credit: Blausen.com staff, doi: 10.15347/wjm/2014.010.

Study: Language is Learned in Ancient General-Purpose Brain Circuits that Predate Humans

Jan 30, 2018 by News Staff

It has often been claimed that we learn language using brain circuits that are specifically dedicated to this purpose. Now, new evidence suggests that...

Dr. Gustafson with a mother-to-be in the fetal biomagnetometer. Image credit: University of Kansas.

Research Provides First Evidence for Fetal Language Discrimination

Aug 10, 2017 by News Staff

According to new research published in the journal NeuroReport, a month before they are born, fetuses can distinguish between someone speaking to them...

Geographic distribution of the 6,452 word lists analyzed in this study. Colors distinguish different linguistic macroareas, regions with relatively little or no contact between them (but with much internal contact between their populations). These are North America (orange), South America (dark green), Eurasia (blue), Africa (green), Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands (red), and Australia (fuchsia). Image credit: Damián E. Blasi et al.

Unrelated Languages Often Use Same Sounds for Common Objects and Ideas, Research Finds

Sep 13, 2016 by News Staff

A careful statistical examination of words from 6,000+ languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter...

Ashkenazi Jews of 19th century Eastern Europe portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur, by Maurycy Gottlieb, 1878 (from Jewish Art, p. 199).

Yiddish Language was Invented by Slavo-Iranian Jewish Merchants, Scientists Say

Apr 19, 2016 by News Staff

A new tool called the Geographic Population Structure (GPS), which converts DNA data into its ancestral coordinates, has pinpointed origin of Yiddish speakers,...

Ink inscriptions on clay (ostraca) from Arad. These documents are dated to the latest phase of the First Temple Period in Judah, around 600 BC. Image credit: Michael Cordonsky / Tel Aviv University / Israel Antiquities Authority.

Analysis of 2,600-Year-Old Ink Inscriptions Provides Clues for Dating of Old Testament Texts

Apr 12, 2016 by News Staff

Historians have long debated whether the first major phase of compilation of Biblical texts took place before or after the destruction of Jerusalem and...