1Many languages were actually spoken around the world before the Tower of Babel story.
The Bible places the events of its Tower of Babel story around 1000 BCE. According to Genesis, before this time “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech”. In reality, there were many spoken and written languages prior to the Tower of Babel events. Chinese was developed prior to 1200 BCE and speakers of several Semitic languages developed the Abjad and Consonantal alphabet prior to 1500 BCE. The oldest known text in the Sanskrit language, the Rigveda, dates to 1700-1100 BCE. Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to about 3100 BCE and Sumerian writings date as far back as 3200 BCE.