1556: What's the Oldest Classical Language? Mar 18, 2019

There are thousands of documents that are thousands of years old, but most of these aren't much use to people who aren't experts studying the language. This is not always the case, such as with some forms of Greek resembling the basics of Ancient Greek, but arguably the oldest language in continuous usage is Tamil, spoken in the south of India, with a literary tradition spanning thousands of years, with extensive, notably secular works, dating from as far back as the 5th century BCE. Some of this can still be roughly understood with Modern Tamil, making it a contestant for the oldest classical language in continuous use, unlike Hebrew.