你理解错了，根本不是这意思。如果你向全世界提问题，那是什么意思？你是谁？你为什么要向全世界的人提问题？你不觉得这句子这么理解会很怪吗？

我们来看上下文

Yet the residents of each village spoke completely different languages. According to recent work by my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, this island, just 100 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, is home to speakers of perhaps 40 different indigenous languages. Why so many?

We could ask this same question of the entire globe. People don’t speak one universal language, or even a handful. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.

所以这里的of是relating to的意思。

一个小地方有40种不同的语言，为什么这么多？

我们可以问同样的问题，为什么整个世界上有这么多语言？