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The Last Man on Earth To Speak His Language (axios.com)
From a report: An elderly man in Peru named Amadeo Garcia Garcia is the last person on earth to speak his native language, Taushiro, the NY Times' Nicholas Casey reports in a remarkable long-read. A combination of disease and exploitation have led the Taushiro, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in the Amazon, to the verge of extinction. In the last century, at least 37 languages have disappeared in Peru alone, lost in the steady clash and churn of national expansion, migration, urbanization and the pursuit of natural resources.
Language studies are valuable.
Languages evolve slowly, so they act as evidence for human migration patterns. The exact details of the migration into the Americas is still under debate, and languages form quite a bit of evidence. Consider the extent of the Dene-Yeniseian language family - members exist in parts of Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Southwest America (Navajo is the most well-known of these languages). This is good evidence that humans entered the continent from Siberia - but also good evidence that the migration occurred in at least two distinct, widely-separated waves, as no DY language is known in South America or eastern North America. Perhaps Taushiro, the Peruvian language the article focuses on, could have provided evidence for or against that theory.
Languages also tell us things about the human brain. There are languages with no words for relative position (eg. left or right), but speakers can simply use absolute position (eg. east or west), and more interestingly, do so correctly. Apparently keeping track of your heading is something you can just do, if your language and lifestyle require it. There was quite a bit of uproar when a study of a certain Amazon language completely upended a lot of theories about human syntax - specifically, the language seemed to not allow recursion. Every sentence is a simple declarative, not allowing things like this sub-clause you're reading right now. (I will note that the study was not very rigorous, and ongoing follow-up studies may prove it false - some of the other claims are already overturned.) But, either way, we learn something about the human mind and its capacity for language.