7 ms·

Genomic study: our capacity for language emerged at least 135k years ago

113 points by wglb 2y ago

wglb 2y ago
The paper https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1503900/ https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... appears in Frontiers in Psychology.
ggm 2y ago
This appears to be an argument for terminus ante quem and useful in that sense but it ignores the possibility there is a far earlier terminus post quem when the actual language capacity emerges. I think it true(ish) that in a model strongly aligned to a single root language the point of segmentation is the last point language seen in all post-fragmented states can exist. But I don't see why that is also the first point. It's just the one we can detect genetically. There will be some subsequent genetic evidence perhaps to a specific structural change in the brain, or vocal chords, or something else, indicative of language emergence. If holographically defined families tools pre-date this time, then abstract concepts were being communicated, even if not vocally. Show-and-tell has limits and I would argue strongly suggest concepts inherent in language existed to communicate how to do the tool making.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our language ability, both of which are dependent on our access to mind. [Our brains are the tuners we use to select which realms of thought we are attempting to focus on. Some people choose to tune into universal compassion, some prefer pack-mentality behaviors such as racism or religious bigotry (including against those who haven't any), some just choose to make money or pursue greater pleasure, the list goes on and on.] Our bodies are mammalian in the basic pattern, but we are clearly distinct in ability. It wasn't 6000 frickin years ago, but there was a creation event where we instantaneously diverged from pure animal life. Mitochondrial Eve traces us to our root. Thanks again, science!
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    The word "instantaneously" seems a bit strong, even assuming you don't mean it literally. Many different kinds of animals apparently exhibit many of the prerequisites or precursor traits that seem necessary for language, even if they don't posses all of them in order to make the leap humans apparently did. Communication is not unique to humans. Vocalization is not unique to humans. Awareness of self is likely not unique to humans. We are clearly unique in some way, but it still seems plausible that it was a gradual (if relatively rapid) process that could have occurred from the confluence of many unrelated circumstances and abilities that has simply only happened once on this planet (as far as we're aware). Language, and everything derived from it, is also a positive feedback loop that only accelerates its own advancement once it occurs. And by looking at the world today, it also seems to preclude similar advancements happening in other species once it's occurred in one.
  - a_gray 2y ago
    > Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our language ability 1. Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to throw a ball to a target?) 2. There is no reason to believe other animals are incapable of abstract thinking (although we can clearly see they are far less intelligent) 3. I don't know what your long screed about bigotry and religion has to do with language ability Just imagine how slow university-level maths would be if you had to do all the thinking in words in your head. Sorry if I sound rude, but this is such a common misconception people believe in, and it's so blatantly not true so I'm baffled people keep on claiming it is 'scientific' to believe that language is identical to intelligence. No wonder some people insist LLMs are just weeks away from becoming AGIs.
    - visarga 2y ago
      > Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to throw a ball to a target?) If a monkey can do it, it's not very abstract.
      - Tor3 2y ago
        When I drive to and from work I drive through several places where I have to mentally imagine what several other drivers plan to do, and, depending on what they actually do, (and what problems they may run into due to the slippery road) what the traffic picture will look like in a few moments. Which will let me decide if I stop right here, for example, so that the car which will otherwise be blocked by me and itself will block the traffic coming the other way can pass in front of me and resolve the (future) situation.. things like that. I have to do the whole thought experiment in my brain in a second or two. There are no words at all involved in that. And LLMs can't do such things as of now. I doubt a monkey could either. At work I do a lot of design thinking. I don't use words for that either, that comes later when I document the thing.
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
It looks like they actually say at least 135K years ago, as that is the latest it could have happened.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yeah, this is a common occurrence in that something is reported to have happened at year X, but in practice it will have emerged rouglhy around that time, and never at one fixed moment in time. Possibly re-emerged over and over again until it stuck.
- vharuck 2y ago
  So this finding is in the same vein as mathematicians who can't yet prove or disprove a conjecture, but can prove tighter restrictions than we knew before. Still interesting, and, more importantly, often productive of new paths or methods of analysis. As for the article itself, I'm not sold. The analysis was about narrowing down to find the most recent regional split in our genetics, with the assumption that language formed before humans split across regions. That would work if we assumed the capability to develop language rested largely on genetics. If a lot of animals could develop a language, then the explosion of human language could come from imitation when one regional group without a language meets another with a language. >"Human language is qualitatively different because there are two things, words and syntax, working together to create this very complex system," Miyagawa says. "No other animal has a parallel structure in their communication system. And that gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts and to communicate them to others." I have seen a lot of ideas about human mental exceptionalism fall apart. It wouldn't surprise me to find out in a few years that dolphins developed syntax.
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    I think we already have decent evidence of animals having synytax. Presumably Miyagawa means something like recursive syntax.
    - mannykannot 2y ago
mathieuh 2y ago
I recommend the book “Why Only Us?” by Chomsky and Berwick on this topic. It gets quite technical in places but I still got quite a lot of out it.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Are Chomsky's ideas on language still taken seriously these days?
  - nurettin 2y ago
    Why not? Do you think they are somehow refuted?
    - dekhn 2y ago
      https://norvig.com/chomsky.html https://norvig.com/chomsky.html
      - nurettin 2y ago
        Ah, thanks. Makes sense. norvig's opinions would be highly regarded here, and the existence of LLMs implies strong evidence to the contrary.
        ekidd 2y ago
        Yes, Chomsky's earlier positions include the idea that recursive natural grammars cannot be learnt by machines because of the "poverty of the stimulus." But this result is only true if you ignore probabilistic grammars. (See the Norvig article for some footnotes linking to the relevant papers.) And of course, LLMs generate perfectly reasonable natural language without any "universal grammar", or indeed, much structure beyond "predict the next token using a lot of transformer layers." I'm pretty sure that most of Chomsky's theoretical model is dead at this point, but that's a long discussion and he's unlikely to agree.
        2y ago
foxhop 2y ago
It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had languages.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  We already know that genes regulates speech - for example, FOXP2 [0] - and have successfully sequenced the human genome, and have started similar initiatives on other archaic human and primate species. Phylogenetic Analysis has been fairly successful already in analyzing our genetic history, so I'm not sure why you'd think it's impossible. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    I found this comment interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did_neanderthals_speak/dp7e4th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did... >As a quick point and this is quite a late response, having the same FOXP2 gene may not be enough. New evidence suggests >Using statistical software that evaluates gene expression based on the type of gene, Vanderbilt graduate student Laura Colbran found that Neandertal versions of the gene would have pumped out much less FOXP2 protein than expressed in modern brains. In living people, a rare mutation that causes members of a family to produce half the usual amount of FOXP2 protein also triggers severe speech defects, notes Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who discovered the gene.
- simne 2y ago
  There are many cases, when animals (or birds) literally speak and even showing very human like behavior on talking. But, as I could see, only humans have so significant language culture that lead to great number of manuscripts. I will even accent - little number of humans write books, but near none other species do this.
- gus_massa 2y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I guess they mean "complex enough language" to discard isolated words and consider only "languages" that have "sentences that may have 5 words" or some more accurate criteria.
brador 2y ago
Existence of language requires 2 mutation trees, one for hearing, one for sound making. Could this be why it took so long?
- api 2y ago
  There’s a lot of this in evolution. Look into how possibly unlikely the emergence of eukaryotes was. The most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is just that high intelligence is incredibly rare. Why are we here? Because we are having this conversation over a global digital network. The universe is probably full of bubbling mats of bacteria.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Why is emergence of bacteria not rare? We don't know in sufficient detail how Origin of Life happened to constrain its probability very well.
    - mcswell 2y ago
      We of course don't know. But I think the claimed evidence is that bacterial life arrived quite early in Earth's history, perhaps a few hundred million years or less after there were permanent basins of water. So the assumption is that it arrived almost as soon as it possibly could (whereas intelligent life (us) took a few billion years longer to show up).
- firecall 2y ago
  Sign language doesn’t need hearing or sound making! I suppose language requires a means of communication and someone to communicate to at a minimum. Although actually we think in a language so I guess we don’t need someone to communicate to. Then maybe language creation just requires the right sort of thoughts? Edit: I should have read the article first LOL! They say as much: > "Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system," Miyagawa says. "My guess is prior to 135,000 years ago, it did start out as a private cognitive system, but relatively quickly that turned into a communications system."
simne 2y ago
I wonder, if it is possible to detect what exactly changed in brain, as this could be a clue to create GAI. Even strict list of changed genes could be extremely helpful for AI progress.
- throw310822 2y ago
  Hey, heads up. It's now 2025, machines have mastered language, displaying better linguistic abilities than those of a large percentage of the population. They also do so using a small fraction of the neurons and synapses found in the human brain, despite being able to express themselves in tens or hundreds of languages and across an extremely wide range of subjects (much beyond the average general knowledge of human beings), dispelling the myth that artificial neurons are much less powerful than the real ones.
  - LEDThereBeLight 2y ago
    No one said artificial neurons are “less powerful.” They just work differently, and the way we “train” them is much less efficient and extensible. So of course there’s value in trying to understand how our language mechanisms work.
  - simne 2y ago
    LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat. Neural system of mammals is structured, as I understand, neocortex consists of about 100 millions structures each ~ 100x400 neurons, something like this. Anyway, just from calculation of human thinking delay appear human NN is just about 500 layers. Second difference, natural I are feed-forward network, not back propagated as typical AI NN, because natural use some chemical method to "calculate" parameters. I think, with right structure and some FF method, GAI is already technically achieved. PS FF NN already exist, but problem that it now using classical method of differential equations which is prohibiting real use, because too much computation need.
    - visarga 2y ago
      > LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat. They are less specialized than brains, but compensate millions of years of evolutionary adaptation with a larger corpus of text, about the same size as 11,000 people use in their lifetime, assuming 1B words/human. Interestingly, humans needed 10 million times more text for cultural evolution, based on an estimate of 110 billion humans who ever lived. So making progress is millions of times harder than catching up.
Tor3 2y ago
The article doesn't say what the headline says. At all. Never in the article does it say that "our capacity for language emerged 135,000 years ago". What the article says is that they have genomically traced our species back to around 135,000 years ago to the point where we started splitting off in different groups, and as we all have the capacity for language we must have had it at the point of split as well (before that all could be said to be in the same local group. Possible, what with those population bottlenecks and everything). There's nothing in there saying there wasn't language before, nor why it shouldn't have been present much earlier. Early enough that e.g. Neanderthals could equally well be covered.
- burnte 2y ago
  Thank you, I read the same thing! Glad folks are commenting on this.
  - burnte 2y ago
    The above comment feels really spammy/AI generated but I promise I'm a real human and just genuinely appreciated someone mentioning the disparity between the headline and the actual research statement.
- tgv 2y ago
  Theoretically, it is possible language developed later. Some people hold the position that there is no specific language hardware in our brains, and that language is the result of a socio-cultural process (which then would spread).
  - jajko 2y ago
    Some animals have provably some sort of language, and most probably have them for tens of millions of years, or their ancestors did. No reason to believe there was no language before those 135k. Clearly you don't need something very special and unique to us. Now where is the threshold when we consider something a proper language and something... less lets say I don't know. Science probably doesn't have a clue neither. The evolution was probably very gradual, ie every 1000 years the complexity grew up by a notch, on average. Compound it to a million years.
gunian 2y ago
[flagged]
- nurettin 2y ago
  We have observed that just knowing something doesn't make it true.
  - fireburning 2y ago
    the one true salvation is jesus christ to the one true god repent evolution is sin people knew better during feudalism
p00dles 2y ago
Does beginning a submission title with "Genomic study:" provide an air of credibility? As in, before any reference to what is being studied, genomic study is mentioned. I'm actually curious.
- epistasis 2y ago
  I think it's less about credibility in general rather than the source of the information. It could have been some sort of archaeological evidence instead.
Simon_O_Rourke 2y ago
I'd say those guys back then started fuddling around with the definition of genocide about that time too.

113 points by wglb 2y ago

wglb 2y ago

The paper https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1503900/ https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... appears in Frontiers in Psychology.

ggm 2y ago

This appears to be an argument for terminus ante quem and useful in that sense but it ignores the possibility there is a far earlier terminus post quem when the actual language capacity emerges. I think it true(ish) that in a model strongly aligned to a single root language the point of segmentation is the last point language seen in all post-fragmented states can exist. But I don't see why that is also the first point. It's just the one we can detect genetically. There will be some subsequent genetic evidence perhaps to a specific structural change in the brain, or vocal chords, or something else, indicative of language emergence. If holographically defined families tools pre-date this time, then abstract concepts were being communicated, even if not vocally. Show-and-tell has limits and I would argue strongly suggest concepts inherent in language existed to communicate how to do the tool making.

MrMcCall 2y ago
Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our language ability, both of which are dependent on our access to mind. [Our brains are the tuners we use to select which realms of thought we are attempting to focus on. Some people choose to tune into universal compassion, some prefer pack-mentality behaviors such as racism or religious bigotry (including against those who haven't any), some just choose to make money or pursue greater pleasure, the list goes on and on.] Our bodies are mammalian in the basic pattern, but we are clearly distinct in ability. It wasn't 6000 frickin years ago, but there was a creation event where we instantaneously diverged from pure animal life. Mitochondrial Eve traces us to our root. Thanks again, science!
- nkrisc 2y ago
  The word "instantaneously" seems a bit strong, even assuming you don't mean it literally. Many different kinds of animals apparently exhibit many of the prerequisites or precursor traits that seem necessary for language, even if they don't posses all of them in order to make the leap humans apparently did. Communication is not unique to humans. Vocalization is not unique to humans. Awareness of self is likely not unique to humans. We are clearly unique in some way, but it still seems plausible that it was a gradual (if relatively rapid) process that could have occurred from the confluence of many unrelated circumstances and abilities that has simply only happened once on this planet (as far as we're aware). Language, and everything derived from it, is also a positive feedback loop that only accelerates its own advancement once it occurs. And by looking at the world today, it also seems to preclude similar advancements happening in other species once it's occurred in one.
- a_gray 2y ago
  > Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our language ability 1. Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to throw a ball to a target?) 2. There is no reason to believe other animals are incapable of abstract thinking (although we can clearly see they are far less intelligent) 3. I don't know what your long screed about bigotry and religion has to do with language ability Just imagine how slow university-level maths would be if you had to do all the thinking in words in your head. Sorry if I sound rude, but this is such a common misconception people believe in, and it's so blatantly not true so I'm baffled people keep on claiming it is 'scientific' to believe that language is identical to intelligence. No wonder some people insist LLMs are just weeks away from becoming AGIs.
  - visarga 2y ago
    > Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to throw a ball to a target?) If a monkey can do it, it's not very abstract.
    - Tor3 2y ago
      When I drive to and from work I drive through several places where I have to mentally imagine what several other drivers plan to do, and, depending on what they actually do, (and what problems they may run into due to the slippery road) what the traffic picture will look like in a few moments. Which will let me decide if I stop right here, for example, so that the car which will otherwise be blocked by me and itself will block the traffic coming the other way can pass in front of me and resolve the (future) situation.. things like that. I have to do the whole thought experiment in my brain in a second or two. There are no words at all involved in that. And LLMs can't do such things as of now. I doubt a monkey could either. At work I do a lot of design thinking. I don't use words for that either, that comes later when I document the thing.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago

It looks like they actually say at least 135K years ago, as that is the latest it could have happened.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Yeah, this is a common occurrence in that something is reported to have happened at year X, but in practice it will have emerged rouglhy around that time, and never at one fixed moment in time. Possibly re-emerged over and over again until it stuck.
vharuck 2y ago
So this finding is in the same vein as mathematicians who can't yet prove or disprove a conjecture, but can prove tighter restrictions than we knew before. Still interesting, and, more importantly, often productive of new paths or methods of analysis. As for the article itself, I'm not sold. The analysis was about narrowing down to find the most recent regional split in our genetics, with the assumption that language formed before humans split across regions. That would work if we assumed the capability to develop language rested largely on genetics. If a lot of animals could develop a language, then the explosion of human language could come from imitation when one regional group without a language meets another with a language. >"Human language is qualitatively different because there are two things, words and syntax, working together to create this very complex system," Miyagawa says. "No other animal has a parallel structure in their communication system. And that gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts and to communicate them to others." I have seen a lot of ideas about human mental exceptionalism fall apart. It wouldn't surprise me to find out in a few years that dolphins developed syntax.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  I think we already have decent evidence of animals having synytax. Presumably Miyagawa means something like recursive syntax.
  - mannykannot 2y ago

mathieuh 2y ago

I recommend the book “Why Only Us?” by Chomsky and Berwick on this topic. It gets quite technical in places but I still got quite a lot of out it.

pfdietz 2y ago
Are Chomsky's ideas on language still taken seriously these days?
- nurettin 2y ago
  Why not? Do you think they are somehow refuted?
  - dekhn 2y ago
    https://norvig.com/chomsky.html https://norvig.com/chomsky.html
    - nurettin 2y ago
      Ah, thanks. Makes sense. norvig's opinions would be highly regarded here, and the existence of LLMs implies strong evidence to the contrary.
      - ekidd 2y ago
        Yes, Chomsky's earlier positions include the idea that recursive natural grammars cannot be learnt by machines because of the "poverty of the stimulus." But this result is only true if you ignore probabilistic grammars. (See the Norvig article for some footnotes linking to the relevant papers.) And of course, LLMs generate perfectly reasonable natural language without any "universal grammar", or indeed, much structure beyond "predict the next token using a lot of transformer layers." I'm pretty sure that most of Chomsky's theoretical model is dead at this point, but that's a long discussion and he's unlikely to agree.
        2y ago

foxhop 2y ago

It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had languages.

alephnerd 2y ago
We already know that genes regulates speech - for example, FOXP2 [0] - and have successfully sequenced the human genome, and have started similar initiatives on other archaic human and primate species. Phylogenetic Analysis has been fairly successful already in analyzing our genetic history, so I'm not sure why you'd think it's impossible. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  I found this comment interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did_neanderthals_speak/dp7e4th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did... >As a quick point and this is quite a late response, having the same FOXP2 gene may not be enough. New evidence suggests >Using statistical software that evaluates gene expression based on the type of gene, Vanderbilt graduate student Laura Colbran found that Neandertal versions of the gene would have pumped out much less FOXP2 protein than expressed in modern brains. In living people, a rare mutation that causes members of a family to produce half the usual amount of FOXP2 protein also triggers severe speech defects, notes Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who discovered the gene.
simne 2y ago
There are many cases, when animals (or birds) literally speak and even showing very human like behavior on talking. But, as I could see, only humans have so significant language culture that lead to great number of manuscripts. I will even accent - little number of humans write books, but near none other species do this.
gus_massa 2y ago
I'm not an expert, but I guess they mean "complex enough language" to discard isolated words and consider only "languages" that have "sentences that may have 5 words" or some more accurate criteria.

brador 2y ago

Existence of language requires 2 mutation trees, one for hearing, one for sound making. Could this be why it took so long?

api 2y ago
There’s a lot of this in evolution. Look into how possibly unlikely the emergence of eukaryotes was. The most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is just that high intelligence is incredibly rare. Why are we here? Because we are having this conversation over a global digital network. The universe is probably full of bubbling mats of bacteria.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Why is emergence of bacteria not rare? We don't know in sufficient detail how Origin of Life happened to constrain its probability very well.
  - mcswell 2y ago
    We of course don't know. But I think the claimed evidence is that bacterial life arrived quite early in Earth's history, perhaps a few hundred million years or less after there were permanent basins of water. So the assumption is that it arrived almost as soon as it possibly could (whereas intelligent life (us) took a few billion years longer to show up).
firecall 2y ago
Sign language doesn’t need hearing or sound making! I suppose language requires a means of communication and someone to communicate to at a minimum. Although actually we think in a language so I guess we don’t need someone to communicate to. Then maybe language creation just requires the right sort of thoughts? Edit: I should have read the article first LOL! They say as much: > "Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system," Miyagawa says. "My guess is prior to 135,000 years ago, it did start out as a private cognitive system, but relatively quickly that turned into a communications system."

simne 2y ago

I wonder, if it is possible to detect what exactly changed in brain, as this could be a clue to create GAI. Even strict list of changed genes could be extremely helpful for AI progress.

throw310822 2y ago
Hey, heads up. It's now 2025, machines have mastered language, displaying better linguistic abilities than those of a large percentage of the population. They also do so using a small fraction of the neurons and synapses found in the human brain, despite being able to express themselves in tens or hundreds of languages and across an extremely wide range of subjects (much beyond the average general knowledge of human beings), dispelling the myth that artificial neurons are much less powerful than the real ones.
- LEDThereBeLight 2y ago
  No one said artificial neurons are “less powerful.” They just work differently, and the way we “train” them is much less efficient and extensible. So of course there’s value in trying to understand how our language mechanisms work.
- simne 2y ago
  LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat. Neural system of mammals is structured, as I understand, neocortex consists of about 100 millions structures each ~ 100x400 neurons, something like this. Anyway, just from calculation of human thinking delay appear human NN is just about 500 layers. Second difference, natural I are feed-forward network, not back propagated as typical AI NN, because natural use some chemical method to "calculate" parameters. I think, with right structure and some FF method, GAI is already technically achieved. PS FF NN already exist, but problem that it now using classical method of differential equations which is prohibiting real use, because too much computation need.
  - visarga 2y ago
    > LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat. They are less specialized than brains, but compensate millions of years of evolutionary adaptation with a larger corpus of text, about the same size as 11,000 people use in their lifetime, assuming 1B words/human. Interestingly, humans needed 10 million times more text for cultural evolution, based on an estimate of 110 billion humans who ever lived. So making progress is millions of times harder than catching up.

Tor3 2y ago

The article doesn't say what the headline says. At all. Never in the article does it say that "our capacity for language emerged 135,000 years ago". What the article says is that they have genomically traced our species back to around 135,000 years ago to the point where we started splitting off in different groups, and as we all have the capacity for language we must have had it at the point of split as well (before that all could be said to be in the same local group. Possible, what with those population bottlenecks and everything). There's nothing in there saying there wasn't language before, nor why it shouldn't have been present much earlier. Early enough that e.g. Neanderthals could equally well be covered.

burnte 2y ago
Thank you, I read the same thing! Glad folks are commenting on this.
- burnte 2y ago
  The above comment feels really spammy/AI generated but I promise I'm a real human and just genuinely appreciated someone mentioning the disparity between the headline and the actual research statement.
tgv 2y ago
Theoretically, it is possible language developed later. Some people hold the position that there is no specific language hardware in our brains, and that language is the result of a socio-cultural process (which then would spread).
- jajko 2y ago
  Some animals have provably some sort of language, and most probably have them for tens of millions of years, or their ancestors did. No reason to believe there was no language before those 135k. Clearly you don't need something very special and unique to us. Now where is the threshold when we consider something a proper language and something... less lets say I don't know. Science probably doesn't have a clue neither. The evolution was probably very gradual, ie every 1000 years the complexity grew up by a notch, on average. Compound it to a million years.

gunian 2y ago

[flagged]

nurettin 2y ago
We have observed that just knowing something doesn't make it true.
- fireburning 2y ago
  the one true salvation is jesus christ to the one true god repent evolution is sin people knew better during feudalism

p00dles 2y ago

Does beginning a submission title with "Genomic study:" provide an air of credibility? As in, before any reference to what is being studied, genomic study is mentioned. I'm actually curious.

epistasis 2y ago
I think it's less about credibility in general rather than the source of the information. It could have been some sort of archaeological evidence instead.

Simon_O_Rourke 2y ago

I'd say those guys back then started fuddling around with the definition of genocide about that time too.