Bob Geldof and the BBC are planning to set up a website they say will be a definitive guide to mankind, reports CNET. The Dictionary of Man and an eight-part television series aim to document every human society currently existing, the BBC said on its website.

Geldof said the Web site would create the largest living record of DVDs, books, films, photographs, art, and documented and personal accounts from people in every group in society.

The Web site will also include social networking technology so that individuals can trace their clan, tribe or family.

Geldof, who has spearheaded several campaigns against global poverty, said the idea for the website came after a meeting 20 years ago with a regional governor in northern Niger who told him that 300 languages had disappeared in two years during a famine.