I mean, for example south and Central America only have like 2 or 3 languages, and is like the same territory of Europe, but in Europe in a “small” area are more than 6 languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian). Focus more in explaining why in Europe are so many languages in such a “small” territory?
Edit 1: yeah I know América has a lot of different indigenous languages and dialects, also Europe. I’m focusing on the principal languages
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a great book on this question is “guns germs and steel” by jared diamond but the simplest answer is colonization and a collection of mixed occurrences of those three words in that books title.
the majority of the human population, lived on a side of the world that was possible (although tough at times) to connect/trade/fight with each-other.
war is a huge factor in advancing in technology through financing scientists, engineers, etc and thus larger and larger groups of people, speaking different languages, specializing in different jumps in tech led to established cultures relatively equal to eachother across the “europe, asia, and africa”.
now on the flip side the americas had vastly fewer people, but there were still many many languages in the “new world” buuuuut because of less people and fewer wars/advances in tech, when the old world colonizers came to america they had vastly more advanced weapons and battle tactics and diseases (total other side of this story on diseases but i recommend that book to explain it better) completely unknown to the local people, leading them to slowly disappear from dying or being absorbed into the culture of the conquering people.
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