Finding myself here—in an island nation that’s home to more than 300 tribes and about 850 different languages—was one of the most remarkable experiences of my entire life. Papua New Guinea also happens to be the most linguistically diverse place on earth.
But that incredible diversity is declining. Half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today could be gone by the end of the century. And Papua New Guinea, which hosts more than 10 percent of the world’s languages, is now finding its own linguistic diversity under threat.
After this experience, I had to learn more. Where have we lost languages in other parts of the world, and how have they been forgotten? Are we trying to bring them back? More importantly, how do we trace the roots of our collective memory back to the very sounds that first made us human?