> Language is roughly what separates humans from other apes Maybe not. A recent study pushes back the "dawn of speech" to 20 Ma which is far, far beyond the h

> Language is roughly what separates humans from other apes Maybe not. A recent study pushes back the "dawn of speech" to 20 Ma which is far, far beyond the horizon where we consider humans to separate from apes. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw3916 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw3916 Even if you consider Sahelanthropus tchadensis to belong to humans that was only 7 Ma and that is still under debate. I personally find "the fundamental human trait is control of fire to be used for cooking" theory very convincing. We do not yet know how far this goes back but no one pushed that back beyond 2 Ma.