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In The Descent of Man when comparing biological evolution to linguistic evolution, Darwin discusses the concept of 'linguistic fossils' (rudiments):

"The frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter m in the word am, means I; so that in the expression I am, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. In the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation. "

I am a biologist, not a linguist; I would love to hear to what extent the I am example holds true. I cannot find this example discussed in other sources - it is usually omitted when people quote this section of Darwin.

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    You mean whether it’s true that the -m in am means ‘I’? Yes, that’s true – diachronically, that is. If you look up am in Wiktionary, the etymology section will lead you on to the Proto-Indo-European form *h₁és-mi ‘I am’, in which the root is *h₁es- ‘be’ and the ending -mi is the primary ending for the first person singular (i.e., means ‘I’). You can still see the m Latin sum ‘I am’ as well (though like in English it’s irregular there) and other forms like imperfect eram ‘I was’, sim ‘that I be’, fuissem ‘that I had been’, etc.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Oct 5 at 17:55
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    Here more about reconstructed endings of PIE verbs.
    – Arfrever
    Commented Oct 5 at 21:26

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