The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong cover image

The Forbidden Experiment

The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

00:00

The Syphilis Colony in Edinburgh

Four supposed practical attempts to discover the original language, only one of them seems like a safe bet to have actually happened. People from bronze age egypt, mediaeval india and italy and renaissance scotland would all seize upon this same story,. Whether or not each of them tried to actually atit is unclear. But everybody, pretty much everybody in the whole world believed and most of them looked. The question that linguists and anthropologists chew over to day: whether language evolved just once or many times? It lacks a certain spiritual panash that earlier inquiries held. Older ideas of an original language are about something much more profound.

Transcript
Play full episode

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
Get the app