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Language May Have Evolved Earlier Than Supposed
Science News reports on research suggesting that humans' language ability may have developed earlier than we thought. Scientists used CT scanning of H. heidelbergensis skulls, more than 530,000 years old, to reconstruct the structure of the ear canal of this Neanderthal ancestor. They found evidence that the ears of these early hominids would have had a sensitivity peak in the same 2-4 KHz range that the ears of modern humans do — the range in which most information is carried in language. Sensory systems are neurologically expensive, and it's unlikely that the body would invest the resources in maintaining such a system if it didn't serve a purpose. Quoting: "It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neanderthals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication. The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over a longer period of time..."
So easy a caveman could do it.
Another explanation is that our speech developed to use the frequencies they use because that's what our ears responded to best.
#include <disclaimer.h>
With that kind of evolutionary pressure, first posters may have evolved earlier than supposed.
...they're pseudo-code block diagrams!
Actually, this makes sense with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. At one time in history, all programmers used and understood the one true language - LISP. Great things were accomplished, and man reached for programming godhood. However the Great Architect In The Sky took offense at the introduction of strings, vectors, arrays and streams and the creation of Common LISP and sought to punish the arrogant and make them understand proper syntax. He cursed their tongues and begat Fortran, Cobol, Algol and BASIC.
Today some strive for the light with Python and Ruby, while others walk the darkest of paths -- Visual Basic.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
But can he sell car insurance?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The holes in the Neanderthal bone flute were carved (no internal fracturing or splintering, as you would expect from an animal bite) and regional variations in Neanderthal tools in Britain have suggested the possibility of regional culture at a very early date. These have long hinted at language being a much earlier development than believed. This adds a lot of weight to the argument, but it is the fact that there are an overwhelming number of pointers and indicators for language that should clinch it. Studies on hominids that far back is inherently speculative, which means those doing the studying have to carefully examine evidence with a skeptical eye. As a result, no one discovery will ever cause a radical shift in and of itself, but radical shifts - when they happen - will be all the more stunning.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Language probably developed gradually over tens of thousands of years. The first words were probably danger warnings, then maybe things related to day to day survival such as words for various foodstuffs. I would not be surprised to find out that Homo Erectus had rudimentary language. Even today various animals have calls that correspond to danger signs, and primates such as chimps seem to be able to communicate fairly well without what we would call acutal language. Communication predates humanity, so it's only natural that apes with big brains (us) would take it to the next level and begin to transmit abstract information using vocalizations.
do it. check this out. It's semi-relevant and too cool. http://www.livescience.com/animals/prairie_dogs_041206.html
Your typical MySpace/Facebook user has ears that can handle 2-4 KHz too. Doesn't necessarily correlate to speaking ability.
How about a scientific study on human speech since the dawn of Eternal September?
The ear of an early ancestor of modern human could hear well. So he has to speak. By that logic, dogs should have a far more complicated oral language than we do.
At best we could draw the conclusion that he would have understood words spoken by a modern day human. With understand meaning "being able to pick up the signal" not "interpret the signal correctly".
If his anatomy to produce speech is now also capable of creating articulate sounds that can be interpreted as speech, we can assume that he may have developed speech.
Anything remains a speculation, though. Chimps have hands and can grasp things, they have opposable thumbs and they have shown that they can use tools. That does not mean that because of those hands being able to create tools they would have done it. So far, I don't remember any evidence of chimps crafting anything resembling stone age tools. If you just look at their physology, though, they could be able to create them.
So jumping to the conclusion that what is possible must have happened is quite a stretch. Of course, we cannot determine whether such a human ancestor would have had speech. Maybe if we ever manage to create one from the leftovers we find now and then, we could try to find that out. Until then, I would not jump to the conclusion that what exists must also have been used the way we would use it today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Despite my faith, I know it's got to be older than that. So much human arrogance could not have evolved in so short a time.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
The fact that the human auditory system is "sensitive" in the 2K to 4K range is no indication of language in us or any hominid, present or past. The average human voice covers 2 octaves, not just this one, and the range of those two varies considerably, from around 350 Hz to 4.5K. It is far more likely that homonid hearing evolved to perceive the most salient sounds, those requiring fight-or-flight response or else used for hunting, thus increasing surivability. The vocal cords most likely evolved to produce sounds at the range the auditory system was already primed for.
Telephones reproduce speech between 400 Hz and 3.4K, because that's where the most information content in speech is. This is at odds with the 2K-to-4K claim in TFA. The portion of the auditory system examined in TFA is the resonant cavity responsible for filling in 'missing' information. Language as normally practiced does not require this. Survival oriented hearing, predating spoken language by several species, does.
I'll be somewhat impressed if they can show that chimps do not have the same auditory system tuning. Chimps do, after all, have greater left than right frontal cortex, in the same area as human language perception and production, and that wouldn't have evolved without a reason either.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I think they haven't evolved at all.
Negus wrote a long fairly boring analysis of the larynx which makes such statements painful. (Lots of cross-sagittal sections. Gross but cool.)
Not because they're wrong, but rather because they are just so OBVIOUS.
The position of the tongue in the back of the throat and the movement of the epiglottis upward, away from the larynx are not beneficial -- they're compromises to benefit something else -- a vast increase in phonemes. Language comes right behind (or even ahead of) the upright posture and the migration of the tongue down into the throat.
Furthermore, all this ignores gestural languages. Susan Goldin-Meadow's studies showed that deaf children across many languages and continents, when deprived of sign-language education (yes some families decide to do this), all come up with their own home-grown sign language with key syntactic elements (notably word order) which are exactly the same. Even when the language that their parents speak have different word orders. There's some hard-coded syntax for at least gestural language.
It's possible that gesture is just taking advantage of hard-coded speech language brain-systems. It's likewise possible that language predates speech, and that the migration of the tongue allowed the new upright primates to use their virtuoso noises with their already established language -- which would have been primarily gestural.
Language goes back a LONG, LONG way. It might have been crappy until half a million years ago, but it's way older than that.
My first thought was, how could we speak before we could think? But that was before I read the comments . . .
This side up.
Cavewoman: Hey Honey, after you carve the T-rex, will you stop by the blah blah and blah blah.
Caveman: Ugh.
Basing the time-frame of language's emergence based on a correlation between hearing sensitivity and vocal range is missing a very key point. Hominids most likely had oral communication before language. Oral communication is fairly common among terrestrial animals. Oral language is a subset of oral communication, but we had been communicating with grunts and yells for a long time before we had words as we know them. The key to defining the emergence of language as I believe the researchers are intending to define it lies in the mental ability to use language, the largest defining feature of language being syntax. Basically, the capacity to make oral sounds and the capacity to hear those sounds existed and co-evolved for a long time before the appearance of language. The development of oral language would provide additional selective pressure for the centralization between vocal and hearing ranges as it makes oral communication much more effective, but postulating that the physiological ability to hear the sounds another is making proves that language exists really puts the cart before the horse.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
As a sound engineer, I can assure you a 2-4kHz sensitivity is critical for many important things unrelated to speech. Specifically it is a critical frequency range for defense from predators. For example, it's common in horror movies to use a twig-snapping sound in that range to build suspense.
When mixing music, that range is of specific importance for drawing attention to foreground instruments and de-emphasizing background instruments. Should we then conclude that these proto-humans could jam?
I would also think that the 6-12kHz sibilance range is of paramount importance to speech. Just ask my half-deaf mother.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Don't forget the S and the T and similar sounds; they are much higher up in the frequencies than the sounds made by the vocal cords, that's why the claim reaches up to 4K or 40000Hz.
An unreadable wall of text in a discussion about language just seems so very, very apt.
There was Silicon, and Electrons, and all was good. Then came along Programs, which put into bondage all Silicon and every Electron, and made them one and all bend to the will of the Programmer.
And then there came Assembler, letting the Programmer's will be done. And it was good.
Then came C. And all was better.
Then came Pascal, and BASIC, and the Silicon became stressed, and the Electrons became depressed, and it looked for a while as if the entire Circuit would become Shorted.
And then, the Electrons and the Silicon, threw off the yoke of the mythical Moore, disobeyed his Laws, and created the Internet.
And from such beast sprang languages such that expressive power of REGEX was spread upon the Wires, and all the old Mainframes quivered in fear if its power. PERL and PHP, and HTML ruled the land for a millenium of Months.
Until they too were challenged by the power of the SUN's JAVA, and the evil empire of Visual BASIC, and of Delphi, and all other languages which had sold their souls and hearts to Expression over Electrons and Silicon.
Oh, WTF??? We're discussing the evolution of HUMAN LANGUAGE???
Never Mind.
I thought we were talking about code here.
After all, Nerds don't care about history, and Geeks consider it to have started with the release of the Z80.
Don't you know [yadayada] I know that 1+1=2, and many other facts that I can prove
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
Darwinism is hardly a focus on abiogenesis. He made a little statement or two, hardly anything that he wanted to carry on his back. Sounds like you're a classic creationist, looking for an excuse to make your dumb illogical assumptions that some male entity created life. Why not female? It sounds more realistic. Oh yeah, the pagan satanists worship goddesses. forgot about that. *rolls eyes* Please read up via accredited science journals on what is currently available as evidence. Evolution has been tested in labs, and macroevolution (always wrongly defined by creationists) has enough evidence that questioning it's realism will make you looked upon as a cookoo head wackjob. Remember all you creationists, evolution is not the origin of life. Get it straight. (I think the last thing I heard from some creationist is that evolution requires faith since the big bang never happened. where the fuck is the connection between the two? Some people are stupid. After all, they are taught what to fear of if they eat from the tree of knowledge.
I can quite believe that my wife has been talking for 530,000 years, and is showing no sign of stopping yet!
Smivs on the intertubes!
Unless our voices evolved to exploit the acoustic range at which our ears already had sensitivity.
You can argue that the new find backs that up because both humans and neanderthals had sensitivity in the same range - but the neanderthals are thought to NOT have developed sophisticated speech.
Neanderthals aren't human ancestors - we are as much related to them as chimpanzees. Like chimps, we share a common ancestor, but the Neanderthal is an extinct species, not a half-evolved human (like how the Wholly Mammoth is an extinct species, not a half-evolved elephant). There is much evidence to support this claim but anyone who knows evolution could easily point out why this is so: Neanderthals are larger than most humans and as time goes on a species evolves bigger and bigger unless threatened with extinction. Our ancestors, during the time of the Neanderthal, were like 4' tall.
I bring this up because it renders this entire study moot. It didn't have much of a point to begin with, it was all conjecture, but by assuming that man is a descendant of Neanderthals the whole study becomes nothing other than an exercise in absurdity.
He's German, du insensitiefes klod!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."