Extinct languages of the Marañón River basin

Alright kiddo, so you know how people talk in different ways depending on where they come from, right? And sometimes, the way they talk changes over time because new words and ways of speaking come up. But sometimes, the way people used to talk just disappears completely and nobody talks that way anymore. That's called a "dead" or "extinct" language.

Well, there is a region in South America called the Marañón River Basin where there used to be a lot of different languages spoken a long, long time ago by different groups of people who lived there. Some of these languages were spoken by really small communities, maybe just a few hundred people, and others were spoken by bigger groups. But over time, many of these languages disappeared because the people who spoke them were either forced to stop speaking them or they just started speaking the language of the people around them instead.

Now only a few of these languages still exist and are spoken, but many are completely gone and we can't understand or speak them anymore. This is sad because when a language goes extinct, we also lose all the stories, songs and traditions that come with it - so it's really important to try and preserve the ones that are still alive. Plus, learning about these languages that are no longer spoken can help us understand the history and culture of the people who used to live in the Marañón River Basin a long, long time ago.