Where Did Language Originate?

 

When did language appear on Earth? How did such linguistic diversity develop and evolve?  

We may take the idea of speaking a language for granted. After all, just about everyone speaks a language, except for those who have physical problems or those who choose to remain muted. Humans, first appearing on the African Savannah 2.8 million years ago, evolved into several different species until contracting some 40,000 years ago into Homo Sapiens. But it wasn’t until the advent of farming some 10,000 years ago did society really flourish. Populations grew and people dispersed to new lands. From this point on, language use grew and became crucial to society’s growth.   

In a fascinating book, The Language Puzzle, author Steven Mithen pieces together a fascinating look at how words evolved over time.   

He writes: “Some argue for a sudden emergence of language from a genetic mutation at 100,000 years ago, while others suggest phases of ‘protolanguage’ or a slow emergence of language over millions of years; some propose language evolved from singing, while others promote social bonding, storytelling, tool making and hunting; some cherry-pick a feature of language and claim its evolution was the transformative event, such as ‘displacement’ (the ability to talk about the future and the past) or ‘recursion’ (the way in which we can embed multiple clauses into a single utterance). No one seems to agree with anyone else.”  

But it was some 10,000 years ago that human languages flourished. He writes: “Population growth, technological innovation, economic change and social competition coalesced into the early civilizations of Mesopatamia, China and Mesoamerica. Within these a further step in the evolution of language occurred: the invention of writing.  

“The earliest writing took the form of marks imprinted onto clay tablets known as the cuneiform script of the Mesopatamian civilization. The marks begin at c.5,500 years ago as iconic signs known as phonograms and gradually became more abstract to represent the sounds of speech. This is the first definitive proof for the presence of a language capacity equivalent to that found in the modern world. Writing was independently invented in China and Mesoamerica, indicating the linguistic capacity was a feature of Homo sapiens throughout the world.”  

There are some 7,000 languages still spoken in the world. Some 96% globally speak 40% of the languages. Mithen says: “A quarter of existing languages - about 1750 of them - have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Some have no more than a dozen speakers and others may have a lone survivor… Much has already been lost: half a million languages may have emerged, flourished, and become extinct since people began to talk.”  

English, the most spoken language in the world, has 150 dialects. Mandarin, like English, has over a billion speakers. Spanish and Hindi have over a half-billion speakers each. French, Arabic, Bengali, and Portuguese are also quite popularly used. “The majority of the world’s population are either bilingual or multilingual,” says the author, though only 20% of the U.S. is.   

The book never really answers the compelling question: Where did language come from? However, it offers an interesting look at language development beyond the point of creation.  

So why do we have so many different languages spoken in a multitude of ways? He provides the following analysis:  

“One reason is because any language is constrained by the anatomical and cognitive features that everyone shares by virtue of being a member of the same species, Homo spaiens. There are only so many sounds that can be generated by the vocal tract and distinguished by the auditory system we possess: the 144 sounds of the Taa language in Botswana are likely to be close to the upper limit; languages with fewer than ten sounds would struggle to communicate effectively and may be unfeasible.”  

He also says: “Second, while the vocal tract can generate over 300 distinct phonemes, only a fraction of these are required for a language. As we noted in chapter 3 when exploring linguistic diversity, the number of sounds (phonemes) within spoken languages varies from around a dozen to almost 150. There is nothing to say that a language with more phonemes is better or more advanced than one with fewer. English has forty-four phonemes, lacking a range of clicks and guttural chocking sounds that are prominent in other languages.” 

Language for humans is unique. Our last common ancestor -- chimpanzees of six million years ago -- do not speak like us, though they have communicated via the use of sounds.   

He concludes: “It was during the long duree of language evolution that we became entirely dependent on words for every aspect of our lives. To maintain such dependency, evolution not only gave us the joy of words but made language the life force of being human.”    

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.