Wenn die aktuellen Trends anhalten, werden bis zum Jahr 2100 50 % der Sprachen der Welt ausgestorben sein. Was dies zu einem zukunftsweisenden Problem macht: 75 % des Wissens über Heilpflanzen ist auf eine einzige Sprache beschränkt (Camara-Leret & Bascompte 2021, PNAS). Dabei handelt es sich nicht nur um einen kulturellen Verlust, sondern um das Verschwinden von Umweltdatensystemen, deren Kalibrierung Jahrhunderte gedauert hat.
Brandmanagement, Hochwasservorhersage, landwirtschaftliches Timing, Pharmakologie.
Das hier verlinkte Tool kartiert, welche gefährdeten Sprachen welche Arten von Wissen enthalten, bewertet nach Genauigkeitswahrscheinlichkeit.
Die Frage für die Zukunft lautet: Können wir eine systematische Bewahrungsinfrastruktur aufbauen, bevor das Wissen verschwindet, oder werden wir es auf die gleiche Weise verlieren, wie wir die Bibliothek von Alexandria verloren haben … indem wir nicht erkennen, was wir hatten, bis es verschwunden ist?
https://deeptime-research.org/tools/extinction/
6 Kommentare
The tool linked here maps endangered languages by the type of knowledge they carry; fire management, medicine, navigation, ecology, flood prediction – scored by likelihood of scientific accuracy.
The future-facing question: current language preservation efforts focus on linguistic documentation (grammar, vocabulary). But if the most valuable knowledge is embedded in ongoing environmental practice rather than translatable facts, *documentation alone won’t preserve it.*..
By 2100, linguists estimate 50% of current languages will be extinct. This dashboard is an attempt at triage – identifying which endangered languages carry the highest-value environmental knowledge so preservation efforts can prioritize before the window closes.
The underlying research (41 knowledge domains tested across 39 cultures) suggests that the most accurate knowledge is also the most linguistically vulnerable, because it’s tightly bound to specific landscapes and communities.
Losing the language doesn’t just lose words – it loses calibrated environmental prediction systems that took centuries to develop.
The question for this community: **what would a systematic preservation infrastructure actually look like, and is it even possible to preserve knowledge that depends on a living feedback loop with a specific environment?**
If it were up to me, we would all speak the same language.
All our brothers and sisters on this planet being able to communicate clearly with each other and sharing each other’s cultures.
Tbh I am all for evolution toward a common language. Not being able to communicate with most people on the planet is such a problem for exchanges and education.
Ask a French person if they had a choice between saving the French language from extinction and saving the entire human race from extinction – and you got your answer why this planet is doomed by various forms of “ supremacists “
This equally means that other languages are growing. In other words, someone who spoke that language began speaking a different language as well, and then their child (for example) only speaks the new language.
The oral tradition is never broken–so how can any of their knowledge be lost? By moving towards fewer languages, this means the information is now accessible to more people than ever before.
> In three weeks, using AI as core research infrastructure, DTRI submitted 7 papers to peer-reviewed journals: Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, JAMT, JASA, Journal for the History of Astronomy, and Quaternary International.
Ah, that makes sense. lol
> Each one may carry irreplaceable environmental knowledge.
May. May not too. That’s a really ambiguous scare line.
If no one is actively using it to share said potential information then we aren’t really losing it anyway, we don’t have it now. A small group of people have it and aren’t sharing so whether or not they can share doesn’t really make any practical difference.
The win from having less language diversity on the other hand brings everyone closer together.
Overall, lets lose more languages faster please.