-
Asked by adotxdii to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 18 Jun 2011.
-
Ed Morrison answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Do you mean back in the evolutionary past? The short answer is, we don’t raelly know but this is an active and fascinating area of science. Many animals make sounds with the mouths and lungs, but human language is more complex, and probably evolved from animal sounds. Scientists guess that sometime after 5 million years ago, people developed the ability to talk, but we don’t really know why. Either it was because the brain became large enough to gain the ability, or to coordinate hunting and toolmaking ability, or to keep track of social relations in the group (who are the friends, enemies, relatives, and potential mates of all the members of your village).
A good book on this subject is Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar.
-
-
Vera Weisbecker answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Ed is right. Another big thing seems to have been that the human throat is very special in that it can make language-like sounds – other mammals aren’t able to “talk” like we do. And this special throat adaptation only came along quite late in the evolution of the human lineage.
-
Katie Marriott answered on 16 Jun 2011:
I’m a ssuming it would have started as something quite simple like grunts and then as our brains grew and we became more intelligent we developed different sounds and different ways of arranging sounds – what we now call words.
-
Sam Tazzyman answered on 16 Jun 2011:
This is a great question! I don’t know anything about how language first started, but people do also do research on how it has changed over time, using some evolutionary ideas.
-
Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:
That is really interesting to read the answers. I also thought it was mainly down to us being social animals with a need to communicate. As our lives got more complex, then so to our language must have done. Of course I have no idea if this is true, that is just what my intuition tells me.
Comments