WHERE AND WHEN DID IT HAPPEN?

 The Bible states that the confusion of language and dispersion of the people too place "in the land of Shinar," later called Babylonia. (Genesis 11:2) When did it happen? The earth ["earth's population," footnote] was divided," says the Bible, in the days of Peleg, who was born about 250 years before Abraham. So, the events of Babel evidently took place some 4,200 years ago. - GENESIS 10:25; 11:18-26.

Some scholars theorize those modern languages stem from one original language-the so-called mother tongue that they thought humans spoke nearly 100,000 years ago. Others claim that today's languages are related to several root languages spoken at least 6,000 years ago. But how do linguists reconstruct the development of extinct languages?  "That is tricky," says the Economist magazine. "Unlike biologists, linguists do not have fossils to guide them through the past." The magazine adds that one evolutionary liguist arrives at his conclusions by "mathematically informed guesswork." 

Nevertheless, "linguistic fossils" do exist. What are these fossils, and what do they reveal regarding the origin of human languages? The New Encyclopedia Britannica explains: "The earliest records of written language, the only linguistic fossils man can hope to have, go back no more than about 4,000 or 5,000 years." Where did archaeologists discover these "linguistic fossils," or records of written language."? In lower Mesopotamia-the site of ancient Shinar." Hence, the available physical evidence is in agreement with the facts stated in the Bible.   

Next time: DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, DIFFERENT THINKING

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