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Origin of language |
| Humans are the only species that has evolved an advanced system of communication between individuals. Whereas other species communicate through ritualized and repetitious songs, calls, or gestures, humans have developed linguistic systems that can express a literally infinite variety of separate and distinct thoughts. This incredible evolutionary leap is what distinguished humans from all other organisms on earth. Language first appeared between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago in the species Homo sapiens. |
| There are two rival answers that were proposed to the question of how the language evolved: the first and more common explanation is that language was an adaptation of some sort; the second is that language is a spandrel, a non-adaptive element arising as a byproduct of other processes. |
| The first view assumes that language is an adaptation, evolved in response to some selection pressure toward improved communication between humans. Perhaps there was a need for improved communication between hunters at some point in the history of Homo sapiens, and oral expressions were simply the optimal way to solve the problem. The second view, however, assumes language to be the byproduct of other evolutionary processes, not a special adaptation that arose by ordinary natural selection acting on mutations. The supporters of this view believe that natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and potentials might have been spandrels - that is, non-adaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity. In other words, our ancestors encountered environments which required the type of advanced reasoning only provided by a larger brain; however, language capability was not one of those functions for which the brain was selected. Instead, language may be a result of exapting neural structures formerly used for other functions. This view has been reinforced by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, who argues that the brain's language capability cannot be explained in terms of natural selection. According to Chomsky, there may be unexpected emergent physical properties associated with the specific structure of the brain that explain language. |
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