The 1.6 million-year-old discovery about human evolution

The most plausible period in prehistory when humans first spoke has been determined by new study.

Steven Mithens

According to research by British archaeologist Steven Mithen, early humans probably originated in eastern or southern Africa about 1.6 million years ago, when they first learned to speak.

Prior to recently, the majority of experts on human evolution believed that humans originated no earlier than 200,000 years ago. According to recent research by Professor Mithen, which was released this month, the earliest known form of human language is at least eight times older. His analysis is predicated on an exhaustive examination of all the extant material related to archaeology, paleo-anatomy, genetics, neurology, and language.
When taken as a whole, the data point to the emergence of language between two and 1.5 million years ago, coinciding with other phases of human evolution.

Frontal lobe evolution

It is noteworthy that the size of the human brain developed exceptionally quickly after 1.5 million BC, notably after 2 million BC. The internal organisation of the brain, particularly the initial emergence of the frontal lobe region, which is directly linked to language production and comprehension, was correlated with that increase in brain size.

Broca Area

Scientists refer to this region as Broca's area, and it appears to have developed from previous structures that allowed early humans to communicate through hand and arm gestures.

According to recent studies, the development of Broca's region was also associated with gains in working memory, which is an essential component of sentence construction. However, the emergence of primitive language was also dependent on other evolutionary events. Changes in the shape of the human cranium and the appearance of a more developed form of bipedalism approximately 1.8 million years ago most likely marked the beginning of the process of reshaping and repositioning the vocal tract, which allowed for speaking.

The archaeological record provides more important evidence that suggests humans began speaking approximately 1.6 million BC. Humans were not very strong animals in comparison to many other animals. They had to make up for that relative physical deficiency if they were to thrive.

Hunting

From an evolutionary perspective, language was most likely a component of that compensatory approach for physical strength. Early humans need better group planning and coordination skills to hunt huge animals (or, when scavenging, to oppose physically strong animal rivals); language development would have been essential in aiding that. Date-wise, hunting by humans is noteworthy; it appears to have started about two million years ago, but it appears to have picked up significant speed about 1.5 million years ago. The development and generation-to-generation cultural transfer of even more advanced stone tool technology also occurred around 1.6 million BC. The long-term transmission of sophisticated abilities and information from one generation to the next also strongly suggests that speech exists.

Human Migration

Furthermore, the ability to communicate through language was probably essential for humans to survive in a variety of ecological and climatic conditions; in fact, it's probably no accident that the ability to rapidly expand human colonisation of the planet occurred about 1.4 million years ago, or not too long after the likelihood of language's origin. The ability to think forward, plan for the future, and transmit information are the three main forward-looking functions that language has given humans.

There seems to be some continuity between very early human languages and modern ones, according to research. Remarkably, he thinks, some features of that initial linguistic evolution from 1.6 million years ago are still present in modern languages. He is suggesting that some of the earliest words that early humans pronounced were probably ones that characterise the objects they stand for, either through their length or sounds.

In fact, future studies might be able to approximate the structure and organisation of those early languages. While the origin of language appears to have happened about 1.6 million years ago, it was not the end of linguistic evolution; rather, it was only the beginning.

Only very gradually did language become increasingly sophisticated over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, peaking 150,000 years ago with the development of anatomically modern humans.