Did language originate in Africa?

Does this mean that languages evolved rather than that they were the result of intelligent design?

The completely universal incidence of language in all human populations makes this unsurprising. The most logical conclusion is that it evolved well before even the earliest human diaspora.

Just another independent line of evidence supporting the theory of evolution.

It is also evidence that language, like life, may have evolved only once -- though it is also possible that one extended language family outcompeted all the others.

So all of the available evidence, genetic, archaeological and linguistic is completely consistent with the Out of Africa hypothesis. Guess it's time to call it the Out of Africa theory.

Paul Burnett said: Does this mean that languages evolved rather than that they were the result of intelligent design?

Bart de Boer, a linguist at the University of Amsterdam, adds that the paper "looks methodologically quite sound." But he says he is surprised that phonemes can be used to trace language evolution so far back in time—and that over the course of tens of thousands of years phoneme diversities in far-flung areas of the world have not "drifted back to the sizes found in Africa" because cultural evolution of phonemes is "much faster than genetic evolution." De Boer says that he would be happy if the paper turns out to be correct, but researchers must first be sure that its conclusions are not "caused by some methodological artifact we have all missed."

Note that LanguageLog has addressed this paper (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3090), and they point out some complexities in the issues involved that are notably poorly addressed.
Of course, the paper's hypothesis (that all current languages trace back to Africa) is probably true; but the tests the paper used also confirm a number of other hypotheses that are almost certainly false; so it doesn't do a good job at distinguishing.
The paper is probably a good idea, but will need to be reproduced with some more detailed classifications.

Very interesting.

It corroborates similar studies comparing genealogical DNA. Those studies like the Genographic Project, https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/atlas.html , indicate that Australian aboriginal peoples were among the first modern humans to leave Africa about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, predating any migrations to the Americas. (The Genographic Project found Austalian aboriginal ancestor DNA in India.)

Arriving in Australia, they have been isolated until modern times. Now two independent lines of evidence agree.

So how could the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of languages have been in Mesopotamia? Evidently it couldn't have.

Another vindication for Chomsky. If the generation of language is innate, a result of the structure of the brain then the first language is coeval with the first humans. If there was a Tower of Babel, it was in southwest Africa.

Well of course language originated in Africa. If it had originated only on other continents, that would mean that it had to have migrated back into Africa from elsewhere. Well, either that or multiple origination events.

(This is of course disregarding the alternate model of a tower of babbling.)

Language change appears to be mostly unplanned. Writing, on the other hand, does seem to have been an invention, i.e the result of deliberate attempts to figure out how to record speech in physical signs. We even know the names of some inventors of graphical systems: King Sejong for Korean Hangul and Sequoyah for the Cherokee alphabet. If somebody were seriously interested in developing a non-crank theory of intelligent design, looking at how writing systems got off the ground would be a good place to start. Biological evolution does not seem to have involved design, but cultural evolution did and it's always surprising to me how little interest people show in studying the role of intelligence in the realm where it really may have made all the difference.

Do we assume neandertahls were mute? Language would have pre-dated our species just as did technology and art.

Sproat says in his review:

“To test the possibility of polygenesis, he considers models with a second point of origin. That analysis posits South America as a second point of origin, ...”

Can anyone explain this?

I found this beautiful picture over on the National Geographic website in the jigsaw puzzle section.

The man is a member of the Ngada tribe on the island of Flores, Indonesia.

Note the bone structure; especially the cheeks and around the eyes.

We had expanded out of Africa before language's invention it is definitely not a cause-effect relationship.

We had expanded out of Africa before language’s invention[.]

[I]t is definitely not a cause-effect relationship.

Paul Burnett said: Does this mean that languages evolved rather than that they were the result of intelligent design?

We had expanded out of Africa before language’s invention it is definitely not a cause-effect relationship.

I'm thinking that an intelligently designed language wouldn't have irregular verbs, or assign gender to words to which it doesn't really apply, or force somebody to guess a person's gender in order to produce a grammatically correct sentence.

One thing that does strike me as odd .. Its that in the beginning there were the greatest number
phonemes, which were subsquently whittled down. It doesn't make sense to me that the ancestor of all languages had the most phonemes unless..

this indicates that language spent a considearble time incubating in Africa before migrants left. Perhaps that makes sense given that it is claimed that language began 50,000 years before migrations out of Africa.

I understand that the 100 phonemes in modern Africa is also a result of subsequent evolution of language in Africa, but I wonder how many phonemes were present when the migrations began? can that be estimated? If its a large a number, one wonders if that suggests a fairly complex society way back when. Otherwise why have a language dense with phonemes unless you have lot of different types of thought you need to express?

We know for a fact that the origin of one language took place in Nicaragua, and another in the Sinai.

One thing that does strike me as odd .. Its that in the beginning there were the greatest number phonemes, which were subsquently whittled down. It doesn’t make sense to me that the ancestor of all languages had the most phonemes unless..

I believe that the suggestion is that when a group splits from the original population, it is a smaller group that moves away from the larger group, and the larger group tends to stay put. Smaller groups tend to have fewer phonemes in their languages.

This does not give us any help in understanding the origins of the first language(s).

Extrapolating back in time, it seems likely to me that the original proto language would have contained literally thousands of phonemes. This would be logical in the case of a total lack of grammar. Perhaps the speekers of this language originally needed a different sound for vitually every "sentence", e.g a single click might mean "There's a sabre-toothed tiger in that bush over there". This ties in with Steven Mithen's ideas in The Singing Neanderthal, in which he postulates that the Neaderthals communicated by means of a highly sophisticated collection of "musical" sounds; a bit like some Eastern languages which use tonality to distiguish between different meanings of the same "word"? The use of tonality by the Neanderthals would have added greater versatility to a grammarless language. It also ties in with recent theory that there is no such thing as a universal, hard-wired grammar as proposed by Chomsky and Pinker.

Linguists are not quite so sanguine about this report:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3090#more-3090

Henry J said: I'm thinking that an intelligently designed language wouldn't have irregular verbs, or assign gender to words to which it doesn't really apply, or force somebody to guess a person's gender in order to produce a grammatically correct sentence.

If its a large a number, one wonders if that suggests a fairly complex society way back when. Otherwise why have a language dense with phonemes unless you have lot of different types of thought you need to express?

Jim Harrison said: Language change appears to be mostly unplanned. Writing, on the other hand, does seem to have been an invention, i.e the result of deliberate attempts to figure out how to record speech in physical signs. We even know the names of some inventors of graphical systems: King Sejong for Korean Hangul and Sequoyah for the Cherokee alphabet. If somebody were seriously interested in developing a non-crank theory of intelligent design, looking at how writing systems got off the ground would be a good place to start. Biological evolution does not seem to have involved design, but cultural evolution did and it's always surprising to me how little interest people show in studying the role of intelligence in the realm where it really may have made all the difference.

One phoneme per sentence doesn't require a very complex society to develop a few thousand. It might have been an aardvark in the bush, not a sabre-toothed tiger, requiring yet another phoneme.

Helena Constantine said:

Henry J said: I'm thinking that an intelligently designed language wouldn't have irregular verbs, or assign gender to words to which it doesn't really apply, or force somebody to guess a person's gender in order to produce a grammatically correct sentence.

If that is what you think, then google "con-lang"

Joe Felsenstein said:

Paul Burnett said: Does this mean that languages evolved rather than that they were the result of intelligent design?

Groups like the Académie Francaise have tried energetically to intelligently design language, in their case French. But it evolved anyway. Like, you know, they ain't succeeded.

wm tanksley said: Note that LanguageLog has addressed this paper (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3090), and they point out some complexities in the issues involved that are notably poorly addressed. Of course, the paper's hypothesis (that all current languages trace back to Africa) is probably true; but the tests the paper used also confirm a number of other hypotheses that are almost certainly false; so it doesn't do a good job at distinguishing. The paper is probably a good idea, but will need to be reproduced with some more detailed classifications.

skwiver said: We know for a fact that the origin of one language took place in Nicaragua, and another in the Sinai.

Think about the later development of written language - as far as I am aware there was never a written language with one pictograph per sentence - but there were many with one pictograph per concept - with sentences consisting of a list of pictographs.

One phoneme per sentence is what you get with some animals (i.e. call means "Predator Danger hide") and the number of possible sentences expands exponentially with the number of objects you wish the sentences to refer to. On the other hand if you have one phoneme per object, and objects strung together to make sentences, the number of phonemes needed expands linearly with the number of objects. A language with 100 phonemes - describing 100 different thing can be used to create very many thousand meaningful sentences.

Recording the number of sheep is one thing; recording a natural language is another. Hieroglyphics, whether Egyptian or cuneiform, are not natural signs for objects but symbols for words. That's the crucial originality of writing, and why enthusiasm for accounts of its origin that rely on an easy transition from clay balls to clay tablets has abated since Denise Schmandt-Besserat proposed such an account in the 90s.

By the Nicaraguan example, do you mean Nicaraguan Sign Language? That’s a fascinating story of a language caught in the very act of creation. What is the Sinai example?

Jim Harrison said: Recording the number of sheep is one thing; recording a natural language is another. Hieroglyphics, whether Egyptian or cuneiform, are not natural signs for objects but symbols for words. That's the crucial originality of writing, and why enthusiasm for accounts of its origin that rely on an easy transition from clay balls to clay tablets has abated since Denise Schmandt-Besserat proposed such an account in the 90s.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Paul Burnett said: Does this mean that languages evolved rather than that they were the result of intelligent design?

Groups like the Académie Francaise have tried energetically to intelligently design language, in their case French. But it evolved anyway. Like, you know, they ain't succeeded.

jkc said: Unless it is considered intelligent to purposefully design a language with pronunciation rules that are so counter-intuitive that no one else can speak it properly.

Helena Constantine said:

Jim Harrison said: Recording the number of sheep is one thing; recording a natural language is another. Hieroglyphics, whether Egyptian or cuneiform, are not natural signs for objects but symbols for words. That's the crucial originality of writing, and why enthusiasm for accounts of its origin that rely on an easy transition from clay balls to clay tablets has abated since Denise Schmandt-Besserat proposed such an account in the 90s.

Obviously intellectual leaps are required at every step of the process, but there is no question about the sequence of steps in the archaeological record.

mrg said: Alas, if Japanese is a syntactic nightmare, French is a phonetic nightmare -- Japanese is much easier to pronounce, at least to the level of making oneself understood. In the case here, however, I think the point about "design" is that the French try to regulate changes in the language, not design it from the ground up.

jkc said: It's just that the difficult pronunciations, the Academie's regulation of the language, and the stereotype of Franch language snobbery all conspire to give the appearance of design.

jkc said:

mrg said: Alas, if Japanese is a syntactic nightmare, French is a phonetic nightmare -- Japanese is much easier to pronounce, at least to the level of making oneself understood. In the case here, however, I think the point about "design" is that the French try to regulate changes in the language, not design it from the ground up.

Indeed, I was referring to French pronunciation and all of its silent endings. I was being somewhat facetious about its unintelligent design. It's just that the difficult pronunciations, the Academie's regulation of the language, and the stereotype of Franch language snobbery all conspire to give the appearance of design.

Jim Harrison said: Would an American kid find it harder to pronounce French than Japanese if it were a matter of learning the language orally?

Jim Harrison said: The phenomenon of dropped letters doesn't occur in transliterated Japanese, of course, so Japanese seems easier to pronounce.

So, has Atkinson discovered a Vavilov's law for languages?

The greatest phoneme/genmetic diversity occurs at the place of origin?

Golly, you'd think many generations of professional evolutionary lingusts should have noticed this. And here I've been accepting the conclusions of lifelong professionals when the answer was right there in a biblical fable all along. Silly me.

Robert Byers said: Not Africa with just a few languages. I believe the bible says there was originally 70 languages after the split.

It would be instructive to have it explained which Mesopotamian language is easily demonstrated to be related to the language of the following word/sentence:

Angyaliciqsugnarqug-llu.

(It's Yupik for "Also, he probably will be building a boat." And the pronunciation is not remotely like one would expect from the usual US English values for the letters.)

Please do not respond to the Byers troll.

Having lived in China for several years in provinces varying from Henan,where it (Chinese writing, culture) all began, to Sichuan, Yunan, and Hainan, I can say a little (definately not more than a little) about their incredible language. Henan is most interesting. I'm sure you've all heard tell of the confusion arising when the villager from one location moves into her new husbands village, all of 10km away and cannot understand the dialect. All true I'm happy to say. I had a Western History class where Putongwa (standard Chinese) was the only,and limited way they could communicate. (The students each swear black and blue their particular dialect is both older,and therefor truer to the original Chinese spoken forms, and richer in nuance). When one student, in a University of about 23,000 found a student from their own village, it was like long lost family members had once again found each other; entrancing.
The evolution of Chinese characters also took place in Henan, in a small town which was China's first capital; Anyang. The evolution of this written language is shown at a local World Heritage Site known as the Yin Ruins. I have difficulty with the modern characters but at the character museum, a huge ediface dedicated entirely to character history,etymology and calligraphy, you can see clear evolved, economised brush strokes, as the characters with radicals and modifiers, evolve into the characters known today. Literally hundreds of the characters found at Yin are still indecipherable.

Please note when I said standard Chinese (Putongwa) was a, 'limited form of communication', I in no way ment, less good, merely less colourful. In the same way that British dialects vary, and have eclectic localised pronounciation, but standard British english is the norm for News presenters etc.

Also a note to Byers. In my travels, and in teaching a general Western history course, I had to include christianity, impossible to ignore if one is to be at all honest. Touchy subject in China I'm sure you're aware. My host university patrons on Hainan island were a little worried until they realised my take, and extreme lack of belief, we were all much relieved; they had been burned by several U.S evangelicals prior to me and my cohorts arrival. Interestingly there is an extreme desire for students to learn about Xianity, so I gave them the historical roots and consequences warts and all. Several students asked me about the historical reality of Christ. My answer was always more than likely, via Jewish and Roman corroboration. However when they asked about Jesus' divinity, I gave the equivalent of, 'are you out of your fucking mind?' We all proceeded to have a good chuckle. Incidently you can make a whole class of intelligent, keen Chinese students burst their sides in laughter by pointing out that 'god' backwards is 'dog'. Heh:)

That is the best weblog for anyone who desires to find out about this topic. You understand so much its nearly exhausting to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You undoubtedly put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Nice stuff, simply great!

Nice info :-) visit my blog pfllc.blogspot.com

From $129 only! Don't miss it! Magic Smile is a New York-based provider of

There are actually many ways cloning can help society please read, http://www.johnnyconrad.com/how-to-get-filthy-rich-by-cloning-yourself/