In this video, Mark Pagel talks about how language helped us as a species improve our co-operation, such that we can learn from a multitude of sources, not necessarily from just “visual theft”.

Language also prevents the flow of genes and helps to slow the theft of ideas. He cites the fact that the areas with the most number of languages corresponds with the areas that are most densely populated.

I started to wonder how civilizations evolved and began to think of Europe vs. China.

In the video, he states that there are 27 countries in the European Union, speaking 23 languages. In contrast, Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, already united the Chinese language by 210 BC.

According to wikipedia,

Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese script was unified. Under Li Si, the seal script of the state of Qin was standardized through removal of variant forms within the Qin script itself. This newly standardized script was then made official throughout all the conquered regions, thus doing away with all the regional scripts to form one language, one communication system for all of China.

While the United States also had a unified language, English, and it progressed a lot faster than the “old world” Europe, one of the largest countries in the world, which was also one of the first to unify its language, isn’t one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.

What happened with China? A unified language for so long should have come out on top these past years. Yet the dragon is only rising now.

Also, as Chinese is the language spoken by most people in the world, does it make sense for the world to speak Chinese?