3 February 2016

How humans evolved language, and who said what first

We are the only living ape with complex language, but why? What were the first words, and who spoke them? And did Neanderthals converse too?

No other species has our rich and adaptable language skills

Mat Jacob/Tendance Floue

Who spoke the first words?

Language is a powerful piece of social technology. It conveys your thoughts as coded puffs of air or dozens of drawn symbols, to be decoded by someone else. It can move information about the past, present and future, formalise ideas, trigger action, persuade, cajole and deceive.

Today, there are 7102 such codes spoken around the world. All human societies have language, and no language is “better” than any other: all can communicate the full range of human experience. To those of us who study human evolution, this incredible universality suggests that our species has had language right from when Homo sapiens arose in Africa between 200,000 and 160,000 years ago. A more recent origin could not explain how groups that stayed in Africa after H. sapiens migrated to

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