Evolution of language

These notes are initially drawn from "The Origins of Language" by James R Hurford

The Prehistory of a Very Special Ape

• 7m years ago - the line leading to humans split off from that leading to bonobos and chimpanzees
• 4-2m years ago - Australopithecus is the first habitually bipedal ape. Bipedalism allowed us to separate the rhythm of breathing from that of walking and running and freed hands for meaningful gestures
• 2.5-1.5m years ago - Homo Habilis (clever man), was the first to make stone tools. This indicates patience, postponement of gratification, a mind capable of foresight into future needs, and constructive planning,
• 1.5m years ago - Homo Erectus, a tall robust ape made more complex tools and may have had a "protolanguage", a meaningful learned vocabulary but no grammar - just words strung together. They made the first migration of hominins out of Africa.
• 1m years ago - Home Erectus can use controlled fire, which allows cooking and reduction of teeth and gut size, which may have freed up resources for bigger brains. These are the first hunter-gatherers, living and working to hunt and forage cooperatively in small groups.
• 500,000 years ago - We diverge from Neanderthals
• 500,000 years ago - Full language? Earliest estimate
• 300,000 years ago - Home Sapiens emerge
• 170,000 years ago - Home Sapiens start wearing clothing - a significant moment in the emergence of culture, clothing carried information about the status of individuals
• 140,000 years ago - Mitochondrial Eve (the most recent woman that all living humans share as an ancestor on their mother's side) and Y-chromosome Adam (the most recent male ancestor that all living men share on their entirely paternal line) are alive.
• 100,000 years ago - Homo Sapiens comes out of Africa
• 70,000 years ago - Settles Asia, Australia
• 40,000 years ago - Settles Europe
• 40,000 years ago - Complex behavior - more refined and task-specific tools, carved and painted art
• 30,000 years ago - Bows and arrows, flutes
• 15,000 years ago - Settles Americas
• 5,000 years ago - A single mother language of the Germanic, Romance, Slavic, and Indic language existed on the boundaries of Europe and Asia.

if any two individuals living today research their family tree, they will find at least one person in common in both trees who was alive at this time

Brain structure and the evolution of language:

• The principal parts of human brains are structurally similar to other ape brains
• Brain size correlates well with the typical size of a social group, with the occurrence of tactical deception, and the complexity of a communication system
• All animals communicate but only humans have the elaborate learned systems that we call language
• There are over 20 major language families on a scale with Indo-European and no proposals as to how they may be historically related
• The rise of human language may have been very fast, but it's hard to imagine it taking less than a few centuries