Humboldt traveled to the cave where hundreds of the Atures were buried, weighed down his mules with some of their skeletons, then headed to a nearby village. There, the local people showed the foreigner a talking parrot that no one understood: It was the last living thing to speak the language of the Atures, the people whose bones Humboldt had collected. — John McMurtrie reviews Spoken Here by Mark Abley —Dying cultures have the last word: A journalist documents the alarming loss of languages around the world (SF Gate)

Via SciTechDaily, which introduces the article with an “English is a killer language” meme that the author of the book in question apparently discredits.