Genomic study indicates our capacity for language emerged 135,000 years ago
12 comments
·March 17, 2025mathieuh
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.
brador
Existence of language requires 2 mutation trees, one for hearing, one for sound making. Could this be why it took so long?
api
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.
amanaplanacanal
It looks like they actually say at least 135K years ago, as that is the latest it could have happened.
vharuck
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.
Cthulhu_
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.
ggm
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
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!
foxhop
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
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.
wglb
The paper https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... appears in Frontiers in Psychology.
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.