Some anthropologists think our ancestors already "had language" when our species began to spread around the world. If so, it may be that every language in the world is related. (The alternative being that language was invented independently more than once, and that more than one lineage has survived to the present.)
The problem is how you demonstrate it rigorously. Every historical linguist accepts the relatedness of languages in 5000-year-old families. But for proposed older relations (e.g., Nostratic, 10,000-15,000 ybp), the number of linguists that accept them is pretty much inversely proportional to the time depth.
As one of the linked summary articles points out, the further back you go the less evidence you have (lexical replacement), and the more noise (spurious similarities arising from chance). Beyond a certain point you just can't demonstrate relatedness reliably, though exactly what that point is is up for debate.
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/hY7usjsHo1o/story01.htm
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