Origins Of Speech and Language

Speech is a major part of our lives and it has been for millions of peoples lives for a very long time, so much that humans have been dubbed the ‘speaking animal’. People all over the world speak in different languages and use different sounds to create one great web of chatter. But how did this all begin? What was the first language? How do we speak?

The Little Book Of Language by David Crystal approaches this topic in his chapter on The Origins Of Speech. Although before we dive into this, we need to first know a thing or two about languages and their history.

Languages

Languages can be divided into language families. Languages within a family all come from the same parent language. This is known as the proto-language of the family. The most common language family spoken in the world today is the Indo-European Family of which the parent language is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Language. It is thought to have been spoken around 4500-2500 BC. As speakers of this language began to spread out through migrations, the language underwent a series of changes and became divided into several different ancient languages. Below we can see the family tree.

We can even recognise the influence of PIE on our languages today. For example, the PIE word ‘wérgom’ relates to our english word ‘work’ and the ancient greek word for work ‘epyon’.

Basque

However, there are other languages in Europe that do not belong to the Indo-European family, and one that doesn’t belong to any known family. Basque is a language spoken in Northern Spain and South-West France. It is a language isolate, meaning that it has no common ancestor with any other language. Crystal believes that Basque is the last surviving language from the time before the Indo-Europeans settled in the region. We have very little knowledge of these peoples, only that they were hunter-gatherers.

There are many words that Basque has borrowed from other languages such as ‘eliza’ from the latin ‘ecclesia’ meaning ‘church’, however this does not indicate a common ancestry but shows us possible influences of later peoples and cultures on the Basque people.

Connect the Dots

There are many isolated languages in the world, with basque just being one of them. Crystal observes that it is usually easier to find the differences in a language than their similarities. Other language isolates include Sumerian, Elamite and Korean. There is one theory that all languages on earth originated from a single ancient language. Another proposes that ancient languages developed separately from different peoples, this theory would explain the lack of connection between different language families. However the data is inconclusive and a lot more research needs to be done in these areas to form any conclusion.

Speech! Speech! Speech!

Regardless of which theory is true or if neither of them are, it still begs the question; how did speech first develop? How did that language first begin?

Crystal provides us with a basis for an explanation by stating what conditions need to be in place for speech and language to develop. The first is the formation of vocal organs. So in order to make a sound, we need to have the capabilities of making sounds. The vocal organs need to be able to make a range of sounds so that a variety of different words can be used. Another necessary condition is a “brain that can handle all these sounds, and turn them into meaningful words and sentences.”

Crystal postulates that our human ancestors living in Europe between 30,000 to 10,000 BC may have had some kind of primitive speech. Researchers have made plastic casts of the cavity within their skulls and it is shown that their brains would have been a similar size to ours.

John Hawks who is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison wrote an article in Scientific America about the changes in the sizes of human brains. He states that “For the first two thirds of our history, the size of our ancestors’ brains was within the range of those of other apes living today” and then the brains “started to show subtle changes in structure and shape as compared with apes.” One of the human ancestors Homo habilis  “who appeared 1.9 million years ago, saw a modest hop in brain size, including an expansion of a language-connected part of the frontal lobe called Broca’s area.” The brains then grew slowly and steadily in size until we reach the early Homo Sapiens whose brain size is extremely similar to ours. Hawks states that the changes in shape of the brain reflect and “accentuate the regions related to depth of planning, communication, problem solving and other more advanced cognitive functions.”

Furthermore, researchers have analysed the shape of our ancestor’s skulls and neck bones and hypothesise that these people may have been able to make simple sounds. Now these sounds would not have formed a language, but it would be much more varied than the sounds of apes. By 30,000 BC they may have had simple sounds for warnings or emotions, such as shouting out to signal danger.

Sign Language

An interesting feature that we don’t often consider is sign language. Robin Woods in The Evolutionary Emergence Of Language, Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form states that communication “does not begin when someone makes a sign, but when someone interprets another’s behaviour as a sign.” Our ancestors may have used their hands to communicate, with possible gestures such as ones for “come here” or “go away”. Crystal believes that if they used the primitive sounds at the same time as making gestures, their meanings would have become linked and so eventually they would have only used the sounds, therefore forming a coherent verbal language.

Bird Song VS Human Speech

Previously we have compared humans to apes and used them as a measure of the evolution of our language capabilities, but Michael C. Corballis in From Hand To Mouth takes a different approach. He compares language in humans to that of birds. Corballis states that “most birds far outperform mammals, including our immediate primate ancestors, in the variety and flexibility of the vocal sounds they make, and one can see (or hear) some striking parallels with human speech.” He notes that birds have the ability of learning different dialects and even sequences of notes. Although bird song is not a means of conversation but is to do with the “recognition of kin and the establishment and maintenance of territory.” It must be noted that Corballis does not believe we share a common ancestory with birds, at least not without going back at least 250 million years, but that the similarity between human speech and birdsong is a result of “convergent evolution”, which he defines as “independent adaptions to common environmental challenges”. Corballis draws a major distinction between birdsong and human language in that human language is used “not just to signify emotional states or territorial claims, but to shape each other’s minds.”

Writing

By 8000BC, humans most definitely has the capabilities of speech and use of language as we begin to see the first signs of writing around the world. There are difficulties with dating the first signs of writing as it can be difficult to classify what signifies writing from art. Taking an example from Crystal, our road signs usually signify what lies ahead and their meaning can be recognised by us. So, a circle on a road sign will usually symbolise a round-a-bout and we will understand this. But if aliens came down to earth from another planet and the aliens had to decipher our artefacts, how do you think they will interpret this sign? It won’t be so clear if this is a symbol that signifies something or a drawing of a circle or the sun. This is the problem we encounter when we examining ancient artefacts. How do we know if this is a symbol or the beginnings of a writing system or if it simply a piece of art?

In 30,000 BC we see signs of counting. People began cutting marks into sticks and bones. This is called “tallying”. In this system, two marks signifies two things. This could be two days, animals, people etc. Next came clay tokens. People began modelling clay into shapes which distinguished between different types of things. Clay shaped like a cone could signify a mountain, a sphere could indicate the sun etc.

Writing for Trade

We can only guess what the shapes mean, but there is a good argument that these could be animals as farming was just beginning to start up and people would need to keep track of their animals. So the cone could indicate a cow, a sphere a sheep and a cube may symbolise grain.

Around 4000 BC people began making marks on these clay tokens which further distinguished them. So a cross on a cone could mean a female cow. People used these tokens for the purpose of trade. So if I wanted to send you three female cows and two male sheep, I would send someone to you with the tokens (three clay cones with crosses and two spheres with circles on them), and they would know what I was sending them. The problem with this was that the messenger carrying these tokens to the receiver of the gifts could easily take one of the tokens for himself, say a cone with a cross, and no one would know. This means that when I send the animals, the messenger can simply take one of the female cows and the receiver wouldn’t be aware he was supposed to receive more. To prevent this, they began to bore holes in the tokens and string them together. They joined the ends together with clay and made their own personal mark or seal. Now for the messenger to steal a cow he would have to break the seal and the receiver would be immediately aware he has been stolen from.

Putting it all Together

Hence we begin to get a picture of a sequence of major points in the evolution of human language and speech. What may have first started as gestures and signs may have become associated with sounds. These gestures could have eventually dropped off to leave only the verbal sounds forming a basis for a language. This was then developed and finally was evident in writing, art and trade.

Conclusion

We have examined the conditions necessary for speech to occur, and discussed the classifications of language as well as briefly looking at the influence of sign language on speech and giving a brief aside to discuss writing as a form of communication and recording as well as its use in trade. This article is merely an introduction and there are many more avenues to journey down in relation to the origins of speech and language. A vast amount of this topic is still up to debate and is composed of theories and hypotheses, so it may be up to you to look at the facts and see which theory best fits the data that we have at the present time.