Summary: New biological study suggests that humans initial developed language about 135,000 years earlier when geographical divides started to divide, followed by common social use around 100, 000 years ago. Using data from 15 biological studies, researchers found that early people groups branched out nearly 135, 000 years ago, which probably coincides with the origin of language as a mental system.
The historical record records significant increases in symbolic behaviour that were unheard of by language users around 100, 000 years ago. These findings support the idea that dialect was first thought to be a form of domestic cognition before it came into play in interpersonal communication.
Important Information:
- Origins of Language: Language probably initially developed as a mental capacity around 135,000 years ago, before becoming a communication tool around 100,000 years ago.
- The Symbolic Milestone: A greater number of symbolic activities (art, valuable tools ) were discovered around 100 000 years ago, suggesting a more widespread adoption of speech.
- Biological Information: Analysis of genetic data across various populations provides specific schedule for language emergence in human evolution.
Origin: MIT
When did the human language as we know it come, from a deep in our past?
A new study of genetic data suggests our special vocabulary power was present at least 135, 000 years before. After that, speech might have been in social use 100, 000 decades ago.
Homo sapiens, a species that dates back about 230 000 centuries, is our species.  , Estimates of when vocabulary originated differ widely, based on different forms of evidence, from remains to historical artifacts.
The creators of the new study took a unique approach. According to them, the important question is how far in the past local groups started spreading throughout the world because all human languages likely share a common source, as the researchers are convinced of.  ,
” The logic is very simple”, says Shigeru Miyagawa, an MIT professor and co-author of a new report summarizing the benefits.
Every community that spreads across the globe has a human language, and all languages are related to one another.
According to what the genomics data reveal about the geographical dispersion of the first human populations, he adds,” I think we can state with a good amount of certainty that the first split occurred about 135,000 years ago, so people language capacity must have been manifest by then, or before, depending on what the genomics data indicate.”
The paper,” Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago”, appears in , Frontiers in Psychology.  ,
The authors are Mercedes Okumura of the University of So Paulo, Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History, Vitor Augusto Nóbrega of the University of So Paolo, Vitor Augusto Nóbrega of the University of Arizona, and Rob DeSalle, a principal investigator at the American Museum of Natural History’s Institute for Comparative Genomics, and Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus of  ,
15 genetic studies of various strains were examined in the new study, which were published over the course of 18 years. Three of them used data on the Y chromosome, three mitochondrial DNA, and nine were whole-genome studies.  ,
All told, the data from these studies suggest an initial regional branching of humans about 135, 000 years ago. That is, groups of people subsequently shifted geographically after the emergence of Homo sapiens, and some resulting genetic variations have developed over time among the various regional subpopulations.
Researchers can estimate the time it took for Homo sapiens to still be a regionally divided group because of the amount of genetic variation shown in the studies.  ,
Miyagawa claims that the studies collectively provide increasingly convergent proof about the beginning of these geographic splits. Other academics conducted the first survey of this kind in 2017, but there were fewer genetically relevant studies to turn to.
Now, there are much more published data available, which when considered together point to 135, 000 years ago as the likely time of the first split.
The new meta-analysis was made possible by Miyagawa, who also has a position at the University of So Paolo, who states that “quantity-wise we have more studies, and quality-wise, it’s a narrower window of time.”  ,
Like many linguists, Miyagawa believes all human languages are demonstrably related to each other, something he has examined in his own work. For instance, in his book from 2010, see page 106.
” Why Do You Agree?” Why Move”? He examined previously unexplored parallels between English, Japanese, and some Bantu languages. Around the world, there are more than 7, 000 human languages identified.  ,
According to some researchers, language capacity dates back a few million years, based on the physiological traits of other primates.
However, to Miyagawa, the issue is not when primates were able to utter particular sounds, but when humans were able to develop language as we know it by combining vocabulary and grammar with a system that produced an innumerable amount of rules-based expression.  ,
There are two things working together to create this very complex system, according to Miyagawa, making human language qualitatively different. No other animal’s communication system has a parallel structure. And that gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts and to communicate them to others”.
This theory of human language origins also holds that before we developed our first languages, humans had a long history of having the cognitive capacity for language.  ,
” Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system”, Miyagawa says. It probably started out as a private cognitive system before 135,000 years ago, but it eventually developed into a communication system.
How can we determine when a distinctively human language was first used? The archaeological record is invaluable in this regard. According to the evidence, there was a widespread appearance of symbolic activity, from meaningful markings on objects to the burning of ochre, a decorative red color, about 100, 000 years ago.  ,
Like our complex, highly generative language, these symbolic activities are engaged in by people, and no other creatures. According to the paper, “behaviors compatible with language and the consistent exercise of symbolic thinking are only discernible in the archaeological record of H. sapiens,” according to the paper.
Tattersall is one of the co-authors who most prominently refuted the idea that language could fuel organized thought and other organized activities.  ,
According to Miyagawa, “language was the catalyst for contemporary human behavior.”
It “almost stimulated human thought and contributed to the development of these kinds of behaviors.” If we are right, people were learning from each other]due to language ] and encouraging innovations of the types we saw 100, 000 years ago”.
Other scholars, as the authors acknowledge in the paper, think that there was a more gradual and broad-based development of new activities around 100,000 years ago, involving materials, tools, and social coordination, with language acting as a key component, but not always being the main factor.
Miyagawa, for his part, agrees that this area of research needs to be improved, but believes that efforts like the current paper at least contribute to eliciting a more in-depth understanding of how languages came into being.  ,
According to Miyagawa, “our approach is very empirically grounded, grounded in the most recent genetic understanding of early homo sapiens.”
” I believe our research has a good beginning, and I hope that this will entice people to examine human language and evolution more.”
Funding: This research was, in part, supported by the São Paolo Excellence Chair awarded to Miyagawa by the São Paolo Research Foundation.
About this news about language, genetics, and evolutionary neuroscience research
Author: Abby Abazorius
Source: MIT
Contact: Abby Abazorius – MIT
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
Shigeru Miyagawa and colleagues cite the phrase” Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago.” Psychology frontiers
Abstract
Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago
Recent genome-level studies on the divergence of the early Homo sapiens, based on single nucleotide polymorphisms, indicate that the initial population division within the original stem, H. sapiens, took place approximately 135 thousand years ago.
It is reasonable to assume that the language’s potential must have existed at least 135 thousand years ago, before the first division took place, given that this and all subsequent divisions resulted in populations with full linguistic capacity.
Had linguistic capacity developed later, we would expect to find some modern human populations without language, or with some fundamentally different mode of communication. That is not the case.
Although the current evidence does not specifically identify the time when language first started to appear, the genomic studies do provide a fairly accurate estimate of the period when linguistic capacity had to exist in the contemporary human lineage.
Based on the lower boundary of 135 thousand years ago for language, we propose that language may have triggered the widespread appearance of modern human behavior approximately 100 thousand years ago.
