When did human language arise?

A. Cro-Magnons spoke; Neanderthals grunted? One hypothesis is that the ability to use language is one of the distinguishing features of Homo sapiens as a species.

1. Philip Lieberman (professor of cognitive and linguistic science at Brown) has argued that the human larynx sits lower in the throat than in animals and that this positioning allows a long, large oral cavity that makes speaking physically possible. He has supported this argument by noting that children, apes, and crucially, Neanderthals do not have the lowered larynx.

2. This hypothesis is controversial; however, the larynx lowers only at puberty, long after people speak. There is evidence that Neanderthals’ larynxes may not have been especially low, and researchers in France have constructed a model oral cavity with a raised larynx that was capable of producing a full range of human speech sounds.

B. The “Big Bang” observation.

1. “Really human.” Actually, although our species emerged about 150,000 years ago, according to paleontological and genetic evidence, many have argued that it was only about 50,000 years ago that there was an explosion in sophistication among Homo sapiens, resulting in finer tools, cave art, the bow, tents, and huts.

2. Rationale for the “Big Bang” thesis. Advocates of this argument note that the first species of the genus Homo emerged about 2 million years ago; that by 500,000 years ago, human brains were as big as those in modern humans; and that by 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals’ brains were even bigger than ours. Yet these scholars observe that during this time, there was only minor cultural development. Remains of humans in Zhoukoudian, China, from 500,000 years ago over the next 300,000 years show no cultural development. According to University of Hawaii linguist and language evolution specialist Derek Bickerton, these humans: “sat for 0.3 million years in the drafty, smoky caves of Zhoukoudian, cooking bats over smoldering embers and waiting for the caves to fill up with their own garbage” (Bickerton, Derek. Language and Human Behavior. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995). This has suggested to many that a genetic mutation created the ability for language a good 100,000 years after Homo sapiens emerged.

3. The bigger picture. However, recent evidence reveals a great deal of sophisticated mental activity, similar to that discovered in Europe, among humans in Africa much further in the past. This suggests that our mental evolution was a gradual process tracing back as far as earlier species, such as Homo erectus. It also lends a solution to the problem that the “Big Bang” thesis leaves: if sophistication was achieved in Europe only 50,000 years ago while other humans had already reached Australia by 70,000 years ago, then how did this mental leap—including language—diffuse throughout the world?

C. Conclusion. It is highly likely that human language emerged in Africa, with the emergence of either Homo sapiens or possibly earlier species of Homo. Supporting this is the fact that there is a gene called FOXP2 that is connected with the ability to use language, and it traces back 100,000 years, long before the 50,000-year mark that “Big Bang” theorists designate as the birth of language.