New linguistic analysis finds Dravidian language family is approximately 4,500 years old

(Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) The origin of the Dravidian language family, consisting of about 80 varieties spoken by 220 million people across South Asia, can be dated to about 4,500 years ago, based on new linguistic analyses. An international team used data collected first-hand from native speakers and analyzed these using cutting-edge computational methods. The findings, published in Royal Society Open Science, shed light on the prehistory of these languages and their speakers.

from EurekAlert! - Archaeology http://ift.tt/2ptJLy6