Human Language Arose From Africa: Study

Human language arose in southern Africa, a new study in Science magazine claims.

Language then spread across the globe through human migration. The claim complements fossil findings that point to southern Africa as the birthplace of modern humans.

According to the Washington Post, researcher Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand conducted the study by breaking down 504 languages into their smallest components, called phonemes. As the Post explains, the words "rip" and "lip" are separated by one phoneme, "one corresponding to the letter 'r' and the other to the letter 'l.'"

Atkinson then looked at the diversity of phonemes throughout the world and found that the farther a people would have travelled from Africa, the fewer phonemes in their language. This means that, as predicted by the study, languages in South America and the Pacific Islands had the fewest phonemes, while African languages had the most.

As groups left Africa, the number of phonemes in their language decrease. As the process was repeated, the total number of phonemes in all the languages created decreased, according to USA Today. This is the same pattern that applies to human genetics. Reports the Post:

The pattern matches that for human genetic diversity: As a general rule, the farther one gets from Africa -- widely accepted as the ancestral home of our species -- the smaller the differences between individuals within a particular population.

The study is unique because it attempts to look at language in the distant past. According to the New York Times, language is at least 50,000 years old, which corresponds with the diaspora of modern humans from Africa. However, because words evolve so quickly, linguists are skeptical of claims of language traces over 10,000 years old. Atkinson used "sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences" in order to draw his conclusions, according to the Times.

While viewed with suspicion by some, these new methods are leading to new insights into human language. Linguist Brian D. Joseph of Ohio University told the Times, "I think we ought to take this seriously, although there are some who will dismiss it out of hand."

Comments

[SOD]

03:54 AM on 04/21/2011

Human language arose from Africa as did slavery.

[UnderTheHedgeWeGo]

11:23 AM on 04/21/2011

All things human ultimately arose from Africa.

[raptor]

03:31 AM on 04/21/2011

"Language universality idea tested with biology method"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13049700

[aganunitsi]

04:10 PM on 04/20/2011

Well it would help explain the sudden success of H. sapiens around 50K years ago. If the modern equivalent of the language centers of the brain evolved in Africa around that time it would have presented a tremendous survival advantage.

The article does gloss over the fact that the pure "recent African origin" hypotheses, in genetics, is falling apart. Modern genetic testing continues to show that the multiregional hypothesis (hybridization) is more likely an accurate history of what we describe as "mankind".

[Ana4]

02:34 AM on 04/21/2011

Evidence of a hyoid bone has been found in H. Neanderthal specimens proving that their speech capacity was like ours, though the voice tone was probably higher in pitch (due to the placement of the hyoid bone in the larynx), and there is other evidence in Neanderthal cultural remains that indicate symbolic thinking; therefore, language was likely developed far earlier than modern H. sapiens.

Language is likely to have been used by H. erectus, if not earlier because they employed group hunting practices that must have relied on sophisticated communication to succeed, though no hyoid bones have been found yet in early hominid specimens as they are delicate. It may yet be proven. There have been new 'ancestor' species found every few years now.

It is unfortunate that the Chinese don't care to find out what those 500 +/- paleolithic sites on the Yangze River might yield but would rather they be buried and destroyed forever under tons of water.

[aganunitsi]

10:59 AM on 04/21/2011

The hyoid bone, in and of itself, does not dictate an ability for what we consider human language. Horses have hyoid bones, so do birds.

As for group hunting ability, watch a video of hyenas stalking their prey. Of course an ability to link sounds with thoughts is there. That's nothing like human language. We can train dogs to do tricks, but not algebra.

[Ulalume s Ague]

02:23 PM on 04/20/2011

Absolute horse hockey! There is no teleology in language development. The phonotactics of languages are subject to constant negotiation that leads to change. Phonemes merge, emerge, disappear and reappear over time and without predictability (though we can plausibly understand the likely manner in which a given phoneme might change, but this has more to do with the context in which that phoneme exists). There was no single human langauge from which all others emerged or developed. And their certainly is no way to legitimately posit such a monumental claim in the absence of access to the totality of languages that have existed and have died out--many of which we have no information about whatsoever. AS it stands, the furthest we can scientifically reconstruct backwards is a posited Proto-Indo-European. We are only able to do this because of our ability to develop an understanding of the systematicity of sound changes across a variety of language families of Indo European origin.

[Ana4]

07:58 PM on 04/20/2011

Semiticists, and one from Loyola in particular, have worked on finding the root of that language group and have traced it back to Chadic, when last I checked. I agree, since so many died out long before linguists arose to study such things, there is much we'll never know on the subject.

[Ulalume s Ague]

09:15 PM on 04/20/2011

But Chadic probably doesn't go back 5000 or so years like Proto Indo European is posited to go back, or does it? I'm no Semiticist. The earliest written reflexes of Indoeuropean languages are from Hittite, Luwian and Lycian written in cuneiform. There are some theorists that posit a so-called Nostratic Theory, but this is not at all accepted in the main. There's too much faith and special pleading required to accept Nostratic Theory. I think it is best to let linguistic evidence speak to the scientist rather than trying to hammer, as this phoneme trajectory crap does, data into pre-conceived notion. In any event, if human language evolved with humans, it makes sense that its earliest forms started in Africa before the diaspora of whatever provenance.

[jcabowers]

04:47 PM on 04/19/2011

There seems to be a lot of hostility towards science even though it remains the best method for accumulating knowledge mankind has ever known. This study had an interesting approach but it remains to be seen if other scientists can find supportive evidence for it. What other theories are there for the change in the number of phonemes as distance from Africa increases?

[jimtodd]

01:47 PM on 04/19/2011

It's both funny and amazing to see the desperation generated by a simple theory about language development.

[turleyguy56]

05:58 AM on 04/19/2011

This explains why when we strike our thumb with a hammer, or stub a toe, we sound like rappers.

[mac102751]

04:52 AM on 04/19/2011

It's common knowledge language is 6000 years old and there was only one until god got mad at the tower of Babel. The author should say 6 hail Marys'

[knezrad]

04:40 AM on 04/19/2011

More bogus pseudo-science. No-one knows what languages existed or were used in North America's Mound culture before 1200 AD let alone migration patterns of sounds, which are after all a function of the human mouth, not culture. Patently the first people to speak a language would likely have been African if the first people came about there, but no-one needs to formulate a bizarre structure of untenable logic about a world-wide traceable diasphora to assevere that. Languages must develop thoughts and convey concepts, they do not merely imitate sounds.

[wlansford]

03:20 AM on 04/19/2011

You know, the more I think about this the less sense it makes. Western Europe is a hell of a lot closer to Africa than say...Vietnam. Yet, if you count the tonal variations as phonemes Vietnamese has far more phonemes than say English, Greek or Latin. According to what I've read in genetic studies BOTH people first migrated to North Central Asia BEFORE departing to their final destination and even though Vietnam is much further from Africa, Vietnamese has a much larger compliment of phonemes. One more thing, where is the temporal component of the study? If a people stop and stay in one place for a very long time shouldn't their language begin to increase in phonemic diversity? How about people like the Nigrito of the Philippines? They are genetically much closer to Africans than Malayo-Polynesians who make up the preponderance of Filipinos and predate their presence there by thousands of years. Are their languages more phonemically complex than say, Bontac or Cebuano?

[Ana4]

07:37 PM on 04/20/2011

You make a good point about Vietnamese!
Another hub (besides Central Asia) was/is in the Caucusus mountains, where there is still a high degree of diversity in a small area. Basque language may be a representative of what Aurignacian European language was like at one time/space, before the Celts moved West.

[wlansford]

02:50 AM on 04/19/2011

Interesting but, and it's a really big but, this does NOT mean that language developed only 50,000 years ago. For all we know Homo erectus was reciting poetry a million and a half years ago. All this means is that the mother tongue of MODERN HUMANS was around 50,000 years ago. What preceded it...we most likely will never know.

[Ana4]

07:43 PM on 04/20/2011

It is indeed thought that Homo erectus must have used language the highly developed hunting strategies they employed must have required "sophisticated" or subtle communication involving grammar. It cannot be proven, but is generally accepted as probable among anthropologists. There may not have been only one original 'mother tongue' however.

[lancelot2323]

02:45 AM on 04/19/2011

Well..... Truth be told, there was no Africa when Human Language was born.

[BamaRainbow]

04:15 AM on 04/19/2011

You don't have a clue. Please go away and let the GROWN-UPS handle the important discussions.

There has been almost no significant change in the look of the continents in the past 100,000 years (at the very least). The only real difference is that most areas of the (now underwater) continental shelves were dry land.

[Fr3shDuck]

11:52 AM on 04/19/2011

Maybe they were talking about the fact that Africa got its name when the Europeans came in. It wasn't called Africa by the natives.

[IMRITENOTU]

12:35 AM on 04/19/2011

Oh what a bunch of bahookey this story.

[lokke341]

12:32 AM on 04/19/2011

I kind of wondering exactly how many African languages or language groups this guy took into account in comparison to other world languages. If, for instance, he took into account Koisan languages (one of which is presumably spoken by the people in the picture), which differentiate between dozens of click sounds and pretty much nothing else, and also Niger-Congo languages which have fewer phonemes but phonemic tone and then Afro-Asiatic languages, which a great deal more plosives because they have neither tone nor clicks then of course he's going to end up with more phonemes. All of the language groups in Africa have completely different phonemic inventories spread throughout roughly 1/3 of the World's languages. It doesn't matter how sophisticated his statistical method is if he's comparing six or seven very different language groups to one language group elsewhere in the world. That's basically like saying a third of the World's languages put together have more phonemes than English.... wow what a revelation.

[wlansford]

02:55 AM on 04/19/2011

Agreed! It would also be interesting to see how he treated the native languages of California. Though many of them are lost to history, it is still one of the most language dense areas of the world.

[philhellene]

12:27 AM on 04/19/2011

As I understand it, the basic analogy is false, being:

The more mutations in a group's DNA, the older that group is : The more sound values in a group's language, the older that language is.

Unfortunately, the first is a unconrollable biological adaptation to the immediate environment, the second is a controllable cultural (i.e., conscious adaptation) to the immediate environment.

How many of us can consciously will a change to our DNA? But we can will (i.e, consciously learn) new words, even whole languages, which, by definition, mean new and more sound values.

This is a theory that can neither be proven nor disproven (suffering from a total lack of evidence and a near certainty that there will never be any discoverable evidence). It is the linguistic equivalent if I were to propose that "The center of the farthest star in the entire cosmos was made a molten chocolate - now prove me wrong!"