Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that 'I', 'we', 'who' and the numbers '1', '2' and '3' are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages. What's more, words like 'squeeze', 'guts', 'stick', 'throw' and 'dirty' look like they are heading for history's dustbin - along with a host of others

Evolutionary language scientistsfrom the University of Reading

have been investigating how languages evolve, and whether that evolution followed any rules. Until recently they believed they would not be able to track words back in time for more than 5,000 years, however their new IBM supercomputerhas enabled them to go back almost 30,000 years, and finally provide the answers

Supercomputers are enabling the world to become increasingly interconnected, instrumented and intelligent