00:00 Languages of the world in 1200 BC are explored, highlighting the transformation and evolution of languages over time and the impact of language on societies and cultures.

04:14 Languages are constantly changing, with sound changes and shifts in the meanings of words being regular and predictable, and languages can be genetically related to one another, allowing for the reconstruction of proto-languages to gain insights into the past.

08:13 By 1200 BC, a variety of Indo-European languages were established across Europe, from Ukraine to the Alps to Britain and Ireland.

12:12 In 1200 BC, there were likely non-Indo-European languages spoken in Western Europe, such as Basque, Iberian, Tartessian, and Etruscan, while it is also possible that there were Indo-European languages spoken in Britain and Ireland that later evolved into Celtic varieties.

17:25 In Northern Europe, the languages spoken around 1200 BC were likely pre-proto-Germanic, and there is little evidence about non-Indo-European languages in the region; in the regions further east and south, proto-Baltoslavic languages were likely spoken, while in the Pannonian basin and the Balkans, there were various Indo-European languages such as Dacian, Thracian, and Illyrian, which are now extinct; in Anatolia, there were Indo-European languages like Hittite and Luvian, as well as Phrygian, which was closely related to Greek and Armenian.

21:25 In Mesopotamia and its fringes, Akkadian served as the lingua franca for written and oral communication, while in the southern coast of Arabia, South Arabian languages were likely spoken, and in the Nile Valley, ancient Egyptian was the most widely spoken Afro-Asianic language.

25:22 Bantu's expansion in Africa around 1200 BC, starting in Cameroon, had a significant impact on the genetic, linguistic, and cultural map of the continent, while the languages spoken in the Indus Valley civilization are believed to be Dravidian, which likely migrated south and east following the arrival of Indo-Aryan migrants.

29:28 The Indo-Iranian languages originated in Central Asia and spread throughout the region, shaping the history of half the globe for millennia.

34:21 In 1200 BC, there is direct written evidence of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Rig Veda and Avista scriptures, while the Uralic languages were spoken to the north and the Tokarian languages were spoken in what is now Xinjiang. Old Chinese had also begun to appear in written texts, representing the Sino-Tibetan language family, and the Tai-Kadai and Mon-Khmer language families were likely widespread in southern China.

38:28 By 1200 BC, the Austronesian languages had spread from Taiwan to various islands in Southeast Asia, while the Jomon foragers in Japan spoke a variety of languages and the Eskimo-Aleut tongues were likely residents in Siberia. The linguistic diversity in Siberia was striking, and the Aeneasian languages of Siberia were distantly related to the Nadene languages of North America.