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Language May Have Evolved Earlier Than Supposed

Posted by kdawson on from the friends-romans-countrymen dept.

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..."

9 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So easy a caveman could do it.

    1. Re:Language by SEWilco · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ugh.

    2. Re:Language by BizzyM · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. More than one conclusion. by rhun32 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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    1. Re:More than one conclusion. by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

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    2. Re:More than one conclusion. by gnick · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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  3. Those aren't cave paintings... by chill · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...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.

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  4. Negus by wonkavader · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Language before thinking? by hcetSJ · · Score: 5, Funny

    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 . . .

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