Human evolution: origin of language in mutations (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 16, 2025, 09:27 (18 days ago) @ David Turell

Origin of language in mutations

Why “in mutations”?

QUOTES: “They reasoned that since all human languages likely have a common origin—as the researchers strongly think—the key question is how far back in time regional groups began spreading around the world.”

"Every population branching across the globe has human language, and all languages are related."

They are related in so far as they all use complex combinations of words. It might be interesting to know what other traits are common to all 7000 known languages, The only common origin I can think of is that all human languages stem from human communication. I have no idea why the key question is one of time. The next quote would explain why our 7000 languages are generally so different:

QUOTE: "Based on what the genomics data indicate about the geographic divergence of early human populations, he adds, "I think we can say with a fair amount of certainty that the first split occurred about 135,000 years ago, so human language capacity must have been present by then, or before."

What common sense tells us is that the 7000 different languages would have evolved precisely because of geographical divergence, i.e. as new generations grew up in different surroundings, they would have formed different sounds to denote whatever they wished to communicate.

QUOTE: "This conception of human language origins also holds that humans had the cognitive capacity for language for some period of time before we constructed our first languages.”
And:
"'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."

I don’t know what this means. “Cognition” is simply the process of acquiring knowledge through perception and experience, learning from it, using it etc. The whole animal kingdom can be said to have not only cognition but also the means of imparting knowledge to other members of the species. In other words, all species have the cognitive capacity for their own form of communication. Our language is infinitely richer than theirs, but the basic principle is the same: other species very often use sounds and/or gestures, and those would have been the beginnings of our own languages, but ours have evolved. You might say that all language starts out as “private”, because what we wish to communicate is initially what we think.

DAVID: our brain seems prepared in advance to produce words and syntax. Early on there were grunts and gestures and common grunted sounds became words. The logic of the article using migration times is irrefutable.

You are always desperate to have the brain prepared in advance, although you acknowledge that brain development occurs IN RESPONSE to requirements, and not in anticipation of them. I would suggest that all the necessary anatomical changes came about through need and usage, not through your God consulting his crystal ball and popping in to perform operations. And I would say that the logic of migration as the cause of DIFFERENT languages is irrefutable.