I would have been gradual, likely starting with increased use of body language and facial expression combined with vocalisations to communicate ideas. Over time, and as we evolved from earlier pre-human species, this would slowly gain complexity, adding the first simple words as complete thoughts, then multi-word utterances, then adding syntax and grammar. From there, you have everything needed for language to develop.
You can also look at how children go from incapable of vocalisations aside from laughing and crying, to making gestures, to forming sounds, to simple words, etc. Then imagine that over many, many years and generations.
I believe trading for goods and organizing for hunting and warfare were what prompted more sophisticated words. There’s always a catalyst for everything and the need for survival was the catalyst that encouraged better communication.
There’s no definative evidence, but the consensus is that is was via a slow, messy, adaptive process over hundreds of thousands of years. Starting with grunts, noises, mimickatry and gestures through to developing simple words and phases to support things like hunting and child rearing. Over time and with more complex brain development, naming abstract things from things around them like those they found in nature and seeing things like the stars, sky, sun and moon to more complex grammer and sentences so things like past , current and future tense could be understood and so on as it was learnt, taught, sung and codified.
Well, I once heard a lecture that posits the reason so many of our alphabets start with ‘A’ is because an ‘ahhh’ is an instinctual noise humans make when we’re happy and content. To sit down and write up an alphabet, you need peace and quiet and safety to do it, so it makes sense to begin with ‘Ahhh.’
However, language generally begins with simple signs and gestures. For example, to say ‘cat over there,’ someone might make a meow sound and point in the direction of the cat.
Later, words would be attached to these basic concepts and language would develop.
Slowly very slowly, important words like danger food and water would come first then words used in cooperative things like hunting so you go to the left I will go to the right etc. later come laws and customs on things like marriage and relationships and property. It is a sudden here is language it build slowly over time as each element becomes useful as society itself develops.
This is a very complex question, because language is both social/cultural, but also neurological, and that raises difficult questions.
Everyone knows babies are sponges for languages. All babies pick up all languages at about the same speed – that is, a baby in a family that speaks English will speak the same level of English after three years as a baby in a Mandarin family will speak Mandarin, or Khoi, or any other languages.
But what not everyone is aware of is that it appears that there’s a window: if babies don’t learn language by about age 5, they’ll never really be able to fully learn it. Data on this is limited, because we can’t just deprive kids of language and cripple them for life, but evidence from feral children from across many cultures and languages suggests strongly that this is the case.
So that leaves us with a paradox: if the earliest humans didn’t have language as we know of it, and it’s difficult to impossible for humans to acquire language at all past a certain very young age, then how did language as a physiological function ever evolve?
The short answer is, we don’t know, and while there are some guesses that are more popular than others, in the absence of written records it’s ultimately all guesswork and always will be. All we can really say for sure is, it appears to have taken several hundred thousand years, and is probably the main reason modern humans outcompeted Neanderthals and Cro Magnons (who were otherwise physically stronger and faster). Both of these species likely had at least some rudimentary language skills, but ALL modern humans have advanced language, even places like North Sentinel Island. It appears to be hardwired in us. Somehow.
There is some cool stuff you can find out by thinking about words: important basic words have one syllable like eye, ear, head, arm, cloud, sun, grass, tree, lake, … So those came first. You can also group words for example high, head, hair, heaven, hill. They all start with an h and have to do with ‘up’.
So my theory on this is that it was needed as became smarter.
Most likely we started off with the same voicebox and ability to speak as other primates. As we grew smarter we gained the ability to conceptualize more complicated ideas.
As we are a pack species we wanted to communicate them to others. It would have started with more complex gestures and noises, but it also creates a new evolutionary pressure. Now being able to more accurately and effectively communicate means you and your people might live longer.
Overtime this was selected for giving us our current setup. Obviously, this took a while and was developed over multiple stages of homo sapiens evolution, probably prompting other changes too.
Check out the story of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Prior to 1970, there was no sign language in Nicaragua. It emerged when deaf children started to get schooling together. By 1990 it had become a mature language.
So probably quicker than you think! It like if the brain can do it, language emerges pretty quickly.
Comments
I would have been gradual, likely starting with increased use of body language and facial expression combined with vocalisations to communicate ideas. Over time, and as we evolved from earlier pre-human species, this would slowly gain complexity, adding the first simple words as complete thoughts, then multi-word utterances, then adding syntax and grammar. From there, you have everything needed for language to develop.
You can also look at how children go from incapable of vocalisations aside from laughing and crying, to making gestures, to forming sounds, to simple words, etc. Then imagine that over many, many years and generations.
I believe trading for goods and organizing for hunting and warfare were what prompted more sophisticated words. There’s always a catalyst for everything and the need for survival was the catalyst that encouraged better communication.
There’s no definative evidence, but the consensus is that is was via a slow, messy, adaptive process over hundreds of thousands of years. Starting with grunts, noises, mimickatry and gestures through to developing simple words and phases to support things like hunting and child rearing. Over time and with more complex brain development, naming abstract things from things around them like those they found in nature and seeing things like the stars, sky, sun and moon to more complex grammer and sentences so things like past , current and future tense could be understood and so on as it was learnt, taught, sung and codified.
Well, I once heard a lecture that posits the reason so many of our alphabets start with ‘A’ is because an ‘ahhh’ is an instinctual noise humans make when we’re happy and content. To sit down and write up an alphabet, you need peace and quiet and safety to do it, so it makes sense to begin with ‘Ahhh.’
However, language generally begins with simple signs and gestures. For example, to say ‘cat over there,’ someone might make a meow sound and point in the direction of the cat.
Later, words would be attached to these basic concepts and language would develop.
Slowly very slowly, important words like danger food and water would come first then words used in cooperative things like hunting so you go to the left I will go to the right etc. later come laws and customs on things like marriage and relationships and property. It is a sudden here is language it build slowly over time as each element becomes useful as society itself develops.
This is a very complex question, because language is both social/cultural, but also neurological, and that raises difficult questions.
Everyone knows babies are sponges for languages. All babies pick up all languages at about the same speed – that is, a baby in a family that speaks English will speak the same level of English after three years as a baby in a Mandarin family will speak Mandarin, or Khoi, or any other languages.
But what not everyone is aware of is that it appears that there’s a window: if babies don’t learn language by about age 5, they’ll never really be able to fully learn it. Data on this is limited, because we can’t just deprive kids of language and cripple them for life, but evidence from feral children from across many cultures and languages suggests strongly that this is the case.
So that leaves us with a paradox: if the earliest humans didn’t have language as we know of it, and it’s difficult to impossible for humans to acquire language at all past a certain very young age, then how did language as a physiological function ever evolve?
The short answer is, we don’t know, and while there are some guesses that are more popular than others, in the absence of written records it’s ultimately all guesswork and always will be. All we can really say for sure is, it appears to have taken several hundred thousand years, and is probably the main reason modern humans outcompeted Neanderthals and Cro Magnons (who were otherwise physically stronger and faster). Both of these species likely had at least some rudimentary language skills, but ALL modern humans have advanced language, even places like North Sentinel Island. It appears to be hardwired in us. Somehow.
If you‘re interested in this subject, I cannot recommend the book „the unfolding of language“ by Guy Deutscher highly enough.
God invented language and then the Tower of Babel created the diversity of languages
There is some cool stuff you can find out by thinking about words: important basic words have one syllable like eye, ear, head, arm, cloud, sun, grass, tree, lake, … So those came first. You can also group words for example high, head, hair, heaven, hill. They all start with an h and have to do with ‘up’.
So my theory on this is that it was needed as became smarter.
Most likely we started off with the same voicebox and ability to speak as other primates. As we grew smarter we gained the ability to conceptualize more complicated ideas.
As we are a pack species we wanted to communicate them to others. It would have started with more complex gestures and noises, but it also creates a new evolutionary pressure. Now being able to more accurately and effectively communicate means you and your people might live longer.
Overtime this was selected for giving us our current setup. Obviously, this took a while and was developed over multiple stages of homo sapiens evolution, probably prompting other changes too.
Check out the story of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Prior to 1970, there was no sign language in Nicaragua. It emerged when deaf children started to get schooling together. By 1990 it had become a mature language.
So probably quicker than you think! It like if the brain can do it, language emerges pretty quickly.