Reply #4

The passing of a tounge that virtually no one uses anymore isn't all that significant. However, what is really lost is knowledge:



It is true that at almost every level we constantly have to learn, and relearn, old lessons because the knowledge is "lost". There's a concept known as "indigeous ways of knowing" which is basically culturally based knowledge. We won't lose the theory of relativity so to speak, but we might lose clues to the nature of certain cancers, or of climate patterns, because the knowledge is only currently known in "folk" terms, or this culturally based knowledge. Probably alot of anthropology and sociology Masters Thesis could be based on collecting this kind of folk information, and documenting its use.