Humans Developed Language Capabilities 135,000 Yrs Ago, Researchers Stunned to Find Similarities in 7,000 Languages
It is impossible to imagine human society without language. For a long time, experts have been trying to understand when language entered the human sphere. Researchers analyzed the various developments that humanity has experienced across the millennium and provided an estimate on when humans garnered the capability of communicating through language, stated IFL Science. Findings regarding this examination have been published in Frontiers in Psychology.
The study claims that the genetic makeup that caused humans to have language capabilities came into being around 135,000 years ago. The researchers share that during the period when language capabilities started to develop amongst human ancestors, Homo Sapiens all lived in one tribe. The original group was later divided into several smaller sections. Over 35,000 years, these separate groupings developed verbal and symbolic communication with the available genetic makeup. Communication led to the formation of many facets that are now associated with modern human behavior and culture.
These facets include funerary practices, artwork, and other complex phenomena. Past analysis has proven that all these aspects became popular in the last 65,000 years or so. The process of humans adapting to these processes has been labeled as the "great leap forward." For a long time, there was a debate on what caused this 'great leap forward.'
Experts think language possibly acted as a trigger for humans to come up with several traditions. "We believe that the time lag implied between the lower boundary of when language was present […] and the emergence of normative modern human behaviors across the population suggests that language itself was the trigger that transformed nonlinguistic early H. sapiens (who nonetheless already possessed 'language-ready' brains acquired at the origin of the anatomically distinctive species) into the symbolically-mediated beings familiar today," write the researchers," the study shared.
In their examination, the team discovered that 7,000 languages that are presently being used in human society, have certain similarities in their construction. This implies that they possibly had the same roots. Researchers believe that the similarities are proof that Homo Sapiens could formulate and communicate language before getting divided from the original group. "It follows that, if we can identify when the first division occurred, we can with reasonable certainty consider that date to define the lower boundary of when human language was present in the ancestral modern human population," the study claimed.
Past examinations have determined that a group from Southern Africa was the first one to emerge out of the original group. "Genomic studies of early Homo sapiens population broadly agree that the first division from the original stem is represented today by the Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa," the researchers added. The team associated with the study claims that the division of the Khoisan group happened around 135,000 years ago. This means that humanity could understand language 135,000 years ago. "At present, we cannot go back further to pinpoint the date by which language itself emerged," the study explained. "What we can do is to look forward and see how, subsequent to 135 [thousand years ago], language may have had a direct hand in shaping modern human behaviors."