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..."

Comments

Language

[Anonymous Coward]

So easy a caveman could do it.

Re:Language

[SEWilco]

Ugh.

Re:Language

[BizzyM]

How could language develop BEFORE Adam and Eve, scientists? Explain THAT!

More than one conclusion.

[rhun32]

Another explanation is that our speech developed to use the frequencies they use because that's what our ears responded to best.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[zappepcs]

I'm with you on that. Evolution has more than one input or constraint. Even in the non-speaking animal world, communication occurs regularly. I find it difficult to surmise that because there is no record, it probably didn't happen. The development of many varied languages does not wholly support a sudden explosion of language, but a long history of developing communication methods. If it had started and caught on like some meme, it would look more or less alike all over the world despite local variations. It just doesn't seem to make sense that language could have arrived any other way than slowly with local variations vastly different from one another.. such as we see in the many languages spoken on the planet now. We see this even in the written word.

When the world was much larger (so to speak) assimilation of other cultures did not happen often or on the scales we see now, creating pockets of population that developed on their own-ish. This causes different needs for communication, and eventually different languages.

From http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp

By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts.

In one short sentence, if the ability to speak/hear is innate in the human brain, then to say language only began abruptly 50,000 years ago is to say that the modern human brain really only developed abruptly 50,000 years ago. Forget the 10,000 year barrier some believe. Evolution is capable of many things, but I believe that the modern human brain was basically intact as we know it today before 50,000 years ago.

The paper at ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.donald.html also suggests that it's possible that what we think we know may not be true as there seems no direct evidence to support explosive changes in hominids at that 45,000-50,000 point, only fossil evidence of physical changes. It's a good guess, but still a guess. Communication happened from day one, when spoken language we might recognize as such began is nothing but a guess without some evidence of the actual brain structure or perhaps a nice wall painting of someone giving a speech?

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mr_matticus]

So wait, because what emits noise is a certain way, and of certain dimensions, the things that pick up the noise had to change to accommodate? It works both ways.

You're not listening.

The peak hearing range is attuned to the human vocal range. They are a coupled pair. It is not a case of speech being optimized to our hearing, because the speech organs have much more confining physical limitations than hearing organs. Of note here is that the peak sensitivity of women is higher than that of men--and the vocal organ's peak performance is higher as well. We are not physically capable of producing speech in a significantly different range--our vocal apparatus could not evolve to match a peak hearing sensitivity in a different range.

The ear evolved to optimize to the human vocal range's specific limitations. All speech had to do was get inside the 1-10kHz "normal" mammalian range--the human ear can hear well below and above this range, but the vocal apparatus cannot function there.

I imagine that spoken language communication would have adjusted itself to the hearing range rather than the other way around.

No. The human vocal apparatus has significantly narrower physical limits than the human ear. It cannot respond as effectively.

Something that is variable amongst many humans seems most likely to be something that evolution would play with.

That's just it: it's not that variable. What your brain interprets as great variations in frequency are, in fact, relatively minor. Further, your ability to produce sounds outside the midrange of your vocal tract grows exponentially more difficult. Your ability to hear those sounds requires no similar exertion.

wildly/randomly communicating at a certain frequency range

It's neither wild nor random. It is a direct, physical consequence of the structure and size of the vocal organs. It's not coincidental that a kitten makes high pitched, squeaky noises and a lion has a low, reverberant roar.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

Even in the non-speaking animal world, communication occurs regularly.

I humbly request from the /. community a good definition of "speaking". My dog responds quite well when I speak commands and has a variety of barks/howls/whimpers. My 3-year old, although not speaking proper English, communicates just fine to levels that I'm only beginning to appreciate. My 1-year old only knows ~3 words, but several hand signs and multiple grunts/cries/etc. The cats that live in my house respond when their names are called and know to run when I holler at them - They also hiss when distressed or purr when pleased - I understand their meaning.

Where's the line? In order to communicate well enough for history to record it do you need a documented language? That seems unfair.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Temposs]

Speaking is all of those things, in some sense. That is, vocal utterances with the intent(or side effect, even) to transmit information or state.

Some people may, however, mean it in the sense that restricts speech to such vocal utterances that achieve a human level of communicative effectiveness.

Our physical apparatus for speaking is also more complicated than most other animals, which some people may use as a delineation for speech.

Maybe you are not so much looking for a defition of "speaking" as much as what separates human language from other animal language. Some suggest it is the use of recursion, which allows for communication of a fine level of detail and abstraction. The abstraction thing is important too, being able to describe what does not exist or what is not right in front of us or what is not physical.

The reason it's important to find when human language evolved to more or less its current state is that it would be interesting to know why we have this most powerful tool that all other living things lack and has allowed us to for most purposes nearly conquer the planet.

Those aren't cave paintings...

[chill]

...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.

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[smittyoneeach]

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
--Mark Twain

Not a vast surprise.

[jd]

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.

I don't think it was all or nothing

[dreamchaser]

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.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[dreamchaser]

Yes, exactly. It seems we didn't need writing until we began commerce in early agrarian societies. The need for language probably coincided with the budding technology of our ancestors. Being able to explain how something was done and why was probably pretty important when teaching craftwork, be it firemaking or the chipping of stone into tools.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[porcupine8]

The recency of writing shouldn't be too surprising given the way we learn spoken (or signed) language vs writing. People learn spoken language, period. If a child is exposed enough to a language before puberty, the child will become fluent in it. Nobody has to teach them or explain it to them, and often attempts to do so don't result in acquiring it much faster than otherwise. Gorillas and chimps can learn a basic lexicon, but no amount of teaching gets them to anything resembling the grammatical fluency of an untaught three-year-old human.

Reading and writing, on the other hand, are things that millions of people over the world don't ever learn. Those that do have to be explicitly taught; very few pick up reading naturally from observing others and even fewer writing. For most children learning to read is a very challenging step.

When you compare those two processes, it becomes obvious that spoken language has had time to become very deeply ingrained in our circuitry, whereas reading and writing are not at all. They are things we are capable of, but they are not an integral part of being human.

The birds and the bees and the prairie dogs

[querent23]

do it. check this out. It's semi-relevant and too cool. http://www.livescience.com/animals/prairie_dogs_041206.html

Jumping to conclusions

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[Cairnarvon]

This isn't about hearing well, it's about hearing well in a particular range.
Dogs have good ears because they're hunters, and chimpanzees have opposable thumbs because it helps with climbing (though they have indeed been used for making and using tools as well). There doesn't seem to be any other real explanation for being able to hear this well in that specific range, and like the summary said, maintaining sensitive sensory systems is quite expensive (much more so than just having a thumb in a different spot), so it's very unlikely this would have happened for no reason at all.

It's not at all ``jumping to conclusions'' to formulate hypotheses on the matter.

Bass Ackwards

[DynaSoar]

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.

Negus

[wonkavader]

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.

Re:Cave caveman

[mrsteveman1]

No but he can run lin....ah fuck it

Language before thinking?

[hcetSJ]

language ability may have developed earlier than we thought.

My first thought was, how could we speak before we could think? But that was before I read the comments . . .

My Wife

[Smivs]

I can quite believe that my wife has been talking for 530,000 years, and is showing no sign of stopping yet!