The the most significant language event in history happened at the Tower of Babel. The people of that time had decided to build a tower to Heaven so that they could go up and sample the goodies while they were still alive. (They probably got the idea from reading Jack and the Beanstalk.)
God, who is a pretty good Joe in spite of his bad press, could have struck them down but chose the soft option of having them all speak in different languages so they couldn't understand each other and, thus, couldn't get the job done.
Until then all people had spoken the same language: Esperanto,
