December 2025

The study of proto-languages, at the heart of paleolinguistics, and the semiotic analysis of cave art may initially seem to belong to distinct domains. One reconstructs lost systems of oral communication; the other interprets visual forms left on cave walls. Yet both share a common goal: to understand how early human societies made sense of […]

Paleolinguistics is the discipline that seeks to reconstruct, as far as possible, the extinct languages of prehistory and their evolutionary dynamics. It lies at the intersection of historical linguistics, archaeology, paleoanthropology, and sometimes even population genetics. One of its central objects is the study of proto-languages—that is, the hypothetical ancestors of today’s known language families.