The Origins of Language: When, Why and How (original) (raw)
Related papers
Language as a Critical Factor in the Emergence of Human Cognition
Modern human beings are most sharply distinguished from all other organisms alive today by their possession of symbolic reasoning, the cognitive capacity that makes possible the mental construction of alternative versions of the world. Scrutiny of the human fossil and archaeological records reveals that, while brain sizes expanded independently in several hominid lineages over the course of the Pleistocene, this qualitatively distinctive symbolic faculty only emerged in our own. What is more, this acquisition was made remarkably recently: well within the 200,000-year tenure on Earth of our anatomically distinctive species Homo sapiens. The earliest anatomical Homo sapiens appear to have behaved in much the same manner as their non-symbolic contemporaries, although it is highly likely that they had acquired the neural wiring necessary for symbolic thought in the same event of developmental reorganization that gave Homo sapiens its strikingly derived bony morphology. Only subsequent to about 100,000 years ago do archaeological traces suggest that our forebears had actually begun to think symbolically. This implies that the new capacity was released by a purely cultural stimulus (after all, the biology was necessarily already in place). I suggest that cultural trigger involved was the spontaneous invention of language by members of a small population isolate of Homo sapiens in Africa, at some time after about 100,000 years ago. Structured, rule-bound language is intricately intertwined with symbolic thought as we experience it today; and it is possible to conceive at least in principle how each could have fed back into the other to create a new dynamic.
Origin of Language? In this blog, I will mostly address the evidence of writing, as it is what we can prove. However, to me, language or shared speech, in a general way, is likely pre-modern human. Homo habilis had some possable linguistic vocal development Homo erectus may have been able to speak Homo heidelbergensis may have been able to speak Neanderthals could speak like modern humans “Early Humans have been speaking for a lot longer than we initially thought. New research suggests language is eight times older than previously thought. Significantly, human brain size increased particularly rapidly from 2 million BCE, especially after 1.5 million BCE. Associated with that brain size increase was a reorganization of the internal structure of the brain – including the first appearance of the area of the frontal lobe, specifically associated with language production and language comprehension. Known to scientists as Broca’s area, it seems to have evolved out of earlier structures responsible for early humanity’s ability to communicate with hand and arm gestures.” “New scientific research suggests that the appearance of Broca’s area was also linked to improvements in working memory – a factor crucial to sentence formation. But other evolutionary developments were also crucial for the birth of rudimentary language. The emergence, around 1.8 million years ago, of a more advanced form of bipedalism, together with changes in the shape of the human skull, almost certainly began the process of changing the shape and positioning of the vocal tract, thus making speech possible. Other key evidence pointing to around 1.6 million BCE as the approximate date humans started speaking, comes from the archaeological record. Compared to many other animals, humans were not particularly strong. To survive and prosper, they needed to compensate for that relative physical weakness. In evolutionary terms, language was almost certainly part of that physical strength compensation strategy.” “In order to hunt large animals (or, when scavenging, to repel physically strong animal rivals), early humans needed greater group planning and coordination abilities – the development of language would have been crucial in facilitating that. Significantly, date-wise, human hunting began around two million years ago – but seems to have substantially accelerated by around 1.5 million years ago. Around 1.6 million BCE also saw the birth and inter-generational cultural transmission of much more sophisticated stone tool technology.” “That long-term transfer of complex knowledge and skills from generation to generation also strongly implies the existence of speech. What’s more, linguistic communication was probably crucial in allowing humans to survive in different ecological and climatic zones – it’s probably no coincidence that humans were able to massively accelerate their colonization of the world around 1.4 million years ago, i.e., shortly after the likely date of the birth of language. Language enabled humans to do three key forward-looking things – to conceive of and plan future actions and to pass on knowledge.” “Early humans first developed rudimentary language around 1.6 million years ago – somewhere in eastern or southern Africa. Humanity’s development of the ability to speak was, without doubt, the key that made much of subsequent human physical and cultural evolution possible. That’s why dating the emergence of the earliest forms of language is so important,” Dr Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading ” Noam Chomsky, a prominent proponent of discontinuity theory, argues that a single chance mutation occurred in one individual in the order of 100,000 years ago, installing the language faculty (a component of the mid-brain) in “perfect” or “near-perfect” form. ref Now for my thoughts on the “Roots of Languages” start around 100,000 years ago with the emergence of meaningful symbolism in Africa with Animism. Which then becomes more developed after 50,000 years ago with Totemism. Which then keeps solidifying until around 25,000 years ago in France with that becoming universal symbols and Proto-Language with Shamanism then this was further developed in Asia moving to the Balkans then turkey with the emergence of Paganism, with symbolic Goddesses in art after 12,000 years ago and the birth of the Creation of Male God around 7,000 years ago and proto-kings, such as seen in the royal nobility skeleton discovered in Grave No. 43 in the Varna culture (around 6,400-6,100 years ago) Chalcolithic Necropolis together with the numerous gold artifacts dating to the middle of the 5th Millenium BCE – and is the old processed gold in the world. Which took it to a few different areas but defiantly is seen in a new way as it moved north to the step lands of Eastern Europe and the Proto-Indo-European language as well as south into Jordan and Israel by 6,500 to 6,000 years ago at which time it then moves to Egypt becoming more advanced with the emergence of an emerging nation of Egypt around 5,000 years ago as well as Mesopotamia with Progressed organized religion.
Language and modern human origins
1993
The evolution of anatomically modern humans is frequently linked to the development of complex, symbolically based language. Language, functioning as a system of cognition and communication, is suggested to be the key behavior in later human evolution that isolated modern humans from their ancestors. Alternatively, other researchers view complex language as a much earlier hominid capacity, unrelated to the origin of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The validity of either perspective is contingent upon how language is defined and how it can be identified in the paleoanthropological record. In this analysis, language is defined as a system with external aspects relating to speech production and internal aspects involving cognition and symbolism. The hypothesis that complex language was instrumental in modern human origins is then tested using data from the paleontological and archaeological records on brain volume and structure, vocal tract form, faunal assemblage composition, intra-site diversification, burial treatment, ornamentation and art. No data are found to support linking the origin of modern humans with the origin of complex language. Specifically, there are no data suggesting any major qualitative changes in language abilities corresponding with the 200,000-100,000 BP dates for modern Homo sapiens origins proposed by single origin models or the 40,000-30,000 BP period proposed as the time for the appearance of modern Homo sapiens in Western Europe. Instead, there appears to be archaeological and paleontological evidence for complex language capabilities beginning much earlier, with the evolution of the genus Homo.
Cognitive Evolution and Origins of Language and Speech. (final manuscript)
The archaeological study of cognitive evolution is closely related to the study of the origins of speech and language. The two issues are related as a result of 1) the general nature of any form of communication and 2) the special nature of human communication. First, in general, all communication has an emitter, a receiver and a message. In most cases, the emitter and the receiver are tuned to each other's communications and there is little problem in sending or receiving the message. In all organisms other than humans there are questions about the intentional control of the messages that can be sent. Intentional communications require different cognition from those that arise without thought. Second, in the special case of humans, we have a peculiarly complex form of emitting sounds and an auditory system welltuned to hear those sounds. In almost all circumstances humans are capable of controlling the information they communicate to another person, which can be called the meaning of the message. Control of such meanings is a cognitive difference between humans and most (if not all) other animals. The problem for the study of both issues is to relate them to the material record available to archaeology.
How can we detect when language emerged?
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2016
Views differ radically as to how deep the roots of language lie in human phylogeny, largely because prior to the development of writing systems, this striking human attribute has to be inferred from indirect proxies preserved in the material record. Here I argue that the most appropriate such archaeological proxies encode the modern human symbolic cognitive system from which language emerges. Throughout the 2.5 million years or more for which an archaeological record has existed, change has been both sporadic and rare-until symbolic objects and behaviors begin to appear, well within the tenure of our highly apomorphic species Homo sapiens. I propose that the biology underwriting our unusual cognitive and linguistic systems was acquired in the major developmental reorganization that gave rise to our anatomically distinctive species around 200,000 years ago in Africa. However, the material record indicates that this new potential lay fallow for around 100,000 years, following which it was released by what was necessarily a behavioral stimulus. By far the best candidate for that stimulus is the spontaneous invention of language, which is plausibly underwritten by a relatively simple mental algorithm, and could readily have spurred symbolic cognitive processes in a feedback process. None of this means that earlier hominid vocal communication systems were not complex, or that extinct hominid species were not highly intelligent. But it does emphasize the qualitative distinctiveness of both modern symbolic cognition and language.
2015
For ninety per cent of our history, humans have lived as 'hunters and gatherers', and for most of this time as talking individuals. No direct evidence for the origin and evolution of language exists; we do not even know if early humans had language, either spoken or signed. Taking an anthropological perspective, Alan Barnard acknowledges this diffi culty and argues that we can nevertheless infer a great deal about our linguistic past from what is around us in the present. Hunter-gatherers still inhabit much of the world, and in suffi cient number to enable us to study the ways in which they speak, the many languages they use and what they use them for. Far from 'primitive', they are linguistically very sophisticated, possessing extraordinarily large vocabularies and highly evolved languages of great grammatical complexity. Barnard investigates the lives of hunter-gatherers by understanding them in their own terms. How do they, as non-literate people, perceive language? What do they use it for? Do they have no knowledge of grammar, or have they got so much grammatical sense that they delight in playing games with it? Exploring these and other fascinating questions, the book will be welcomed by all those interested in the evolution of language.
The Minimalist Program and the Origin of Language: A View From Paleoanthropology
Frontiers in Psychology
In arguing that articulate language is underpinned by an algorithmically simple neural operation, the Minimalist Program (MP) retrodicts that language emerged in a shortterm event. Because spoken language leaves no physical traces, its ancient use must be inferred from archeological proxies. These strongly suggest that modern symbolic human behavior patterns-and, by extension, cognition-emerged both abruptly and late in time (subsequent to the appearance of Homo sapiens as an anatomical entity some 200 thousand years kyr ago). Because the evidence is compelling that language is an integral component of modern symbolic thought, the archeological evidence clearly supports the basic tenet of the MP. But the associated proposition, that language was externalized in an independent event that followed its initial appearance as a conduit to internal thought, is much more debatable.