Is there a specific moment when we started talking? The question is not as trivial as it might seem. Until now, linguistics' estimates of the origin of human language have varied widely, based on fossils, cultural artifacts, and more or less fanciful hypotheses. Now a new approach, elegant in its logical simplicity, is revolutionizing the field.
Researchers from MIT and the American Museum of Natural History they analyzed 15 genomic studies published over the past 18 years, reaching a surprising conclusion: linguistics, as a cognitive ability peculiar to our species, was already present at least 135.000 years ago. The reasoning is disarming: if all human languages are related (as most linguists believe) and if every human population spread across the globe possesses language, then this ability must have existed before the first groups of Homo sapiens separated geographically.
The logic is very simple. Every population that has branched out across the globe has human language, and all languages are related to each other.
The genetic meta-analysis that revolutionizes history
Let's start from an assumption: according to our current knowledge, our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for approximately 230.000 years. The new study published Frontiers in Psychology examines specifically 15 genetic studies of different types: three: use data on the inherited Y chromosome, three: analyze mitochondrial DNA, and nine are whole-genome studies. This variety of approaches provides a more complete picture than previous attempts.
The first study of this kind was conducted in 2017, but the authors of the current research had less genetic data available. As he explains Shigeru Miyagawa MIT, “quantitatively we have more studies, and qualitatively, it’s a narrower window of time.” The data now converge more clearly toward 135.000 years ago as the likely time of the first significant genetic separation between human groups.
The uniqueness of human language
In his 2010 book, Miyagawa analyzed previously unexplored similarities between English, Japanese, and some Bantu languages, highlighting deep connections between seemingly distant linguistic systems. Today, there are over 7.000 identified languages worldwide, all presumably derived from a common origin.
Many scholars have proposed that the ability to speak dates back a couple of million years, based on the physiological characteristics of other primates. But for Miyagawa, the key question is not when primates could make certain sounds, but when humans developed the cognitive ability to combine vocabulary and grammar into an infinite generative system.
Human language is qualitatively different because there are two elements, words and syntax, that work together to create this very complex system. No other animal has a parallel structure in its communication system.
Linguistics, from thought to communication
This view of linguistic origins implies that humans had the cognitive capacity for language for some time before they built the first social languages. “Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system,” Miyagawa explains. “My hypothesis is that it first started as a private cognitive system, but relatively quickly it transformed into a communication system.”
The data archeological support this hypothesis. Around 100.000 years ago, evidence shows a widespread emergence of symbolic activities: from meaningful markings on objects to the use of fire to produce decorative ochre. Like our complex language, these symbolic activities are practiced exclusively by humans.
The different theories compared
Among the co-authors, Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History, has supported the idea that language functioned as a “trigger” for symbolic thought and other organized activity.
Language has been the trigger for modern human behavior. In some ways, it has stimulated human thought and helped create these types of behaviors.
Other scholars, however, take a different view. They believe there was a more gradual development of new activities around 100.000 years ago, involving materials, tools, and social coordination, with language playing an important but not necessarily central role. The scientific debate remains open.
Linguistics, the importance of new methods of investigation
The co-author of the study Rob DeSalle, a principal investigator at the Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, contributed to the study's innovative methodological approach. The amount of genetic variation shown in the studies analyzed allows researchers to estimate the point in time at which Homo sapiens it was still a regionally undivided group.
Miyagawa emphasizes the importance of this empirical approach: “It is solidly grounded in the most recent genetic understanding of early Homo sapiens. I think we’re on a good research trajectory, and I hope this encourages more people to study human language and evolution.”
It strikes me how this research overturns many previous beliefs about the timing of human language development. The idea that our linguistic ability emerged so early in our evolutionary history, preceding by tens of thousands of years the explosion of symbolic creativity of the following period, invites us to reconsider the role of language in the development of our species.
We have never been truly silent; the potential to articulate complex thoughts was already there as we roamed the African savannah, long before we began painting on cave walls or forging elaborate tools.
Words, perhaps, have always been with us, just waiting to find their social expression.
