Oldest words in English?

[Michael Quinion]

The BBC ran an item this morning on research into the oldest words in the
language, picking up a story in The Times:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7911645.stm
  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5805522.ece

"Dr Pagel has recently been able to track the evolutionary history of Indo-
European back almost 30,000 years, using a new IBM supercomputer. He said
that some of the oldest words were well over 10,000 years old."

Is much known to anyone on the list about the methodology involved?


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

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