Why Do Humans Speak?

License Creative Commons

David Rabadà

Most ideologies and religions urge us to kneel before the marvel of our capacity for abstract thought, as if it were a perfect gift from providence or evolution. Yet if we are to be logical and objective, we must acknowledge that we think more emotionally than rationally—in other words, they made us swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Abstract thought has not evolved purely for our benefit; quite the contrary, it ended up landing us with a bunch of headaches. Of course, those who choose to ignore this might avoid such discomforts. Ignorance, as they say, brings happiness—or turns us into victims. But let us not complain of ignorance once we have chosen it.

Over the course of human evolution, the sapiens mind became more foresighted, abstract, and creative. Our ancestors, in a sense, grew more cunning, more talkative, more inventive. Articulated speech and the emergence of art both appear to stem from this shift. In many ways, the path set in motion by Homo erectus channelled these transformations. Their social cohesion, their hunting demands, their gathering skills, and their development of more sophisticated tools converged in a vortex of learning. Increasingly, they dedicated more attention and time to their prematurely born offspring, planning further ahead in what they sought to accomplish.

Today, humans are among the few organisms capable of anticipating their futures on such a grand scale. We design and programme processes years ahead of our present moment. National development plans, educational policy frameworks, or corporate investment strategies all demand long-term thinking. No other species on the planet engages in such temporal projection—and it was Homo erectus who first laid the foundations. This fostered and expanded our imaginative capacity, and thereby our creativity. Yet for this to occur, something crucial had to shift: something made that creativity possible. This was a milestone we shall refer to here as SAT—Sophisticated Abstract Thought. SAT brought about biological and cultural consequences far beyond the legacy of erectus. It enabled a diversification of tools, more carefully planned migrations, and improved resource management. As a result, Homo saw a rise in reproductive success, enabling evolution to spread a new variant of our genus—one that would eventually give rise to a species destined to change everything once more: our own.

But before we arrive at ourselves, we must ask: when, precisely, did SAT begin? All Homo species with greater encephalisation than erectus represent a new evolutionary leap in the broader human mosaic. These humans surpassed their predecessors in techniques, communication, and forward planning. Notably, there is a direct link between articulated speech and the capacity to anticipate. One piece of evidence is found in deaf children who are not taught sign language. These children are significantly impaired in their ability to plan, foresee, and reflect with normal cognitive skill. It would seem that without syntax and language, we would lack one of our most essential human faculties: anticipation. SAT gave us that leap forward.

SAT encompasses a constellation of interconnected phenomena, including art, technology, and articulated speech. The latter—articulated speech—is a chain of sounds that ranges from simple phonemes to the construction of highly complex discourse. An increase in phonemes alone would not have improved communication; on the contrary, it might have led to confusion, as similar sounds became increasingly difficult to distinguish. The real breakthrough lay in the construction of syllables, words, and grammar—allowing a finite number of phonemes to express an infinite array of concepts. Articulated speech links phonemes like /s/ and /oʊ/ to build syllables like so, which can then be combined with other syllables like ‘up’ /ʌp/ to form words such as ‘soap’ /soʊp/. These words are joined with verbs to describe actions, which can then be expanded with information on when, how, and where something occurred. And that still only scratches the surface. When we link sentences together, we form stories and narratives which, as Karl Popper observed, allow us to express emotion, warn others, describe absent things, and justify our decisions. From just a handful of phonemes, we have built a communicative system capable of transferring limitless messages, conversing with ourselves, enhancing self-awareness, and refining our social interactions.

But there is more still. This capacity enables us to order our thoughts logically and thereby strengthens our ability to anticipate. Try to reason through a complex argument without using words, and you will find your brain falters. More than that, articulated speech enhances intelligence itself, as the most cultivated minds show five times the neural connectivity of average ones. Childhood displays remarkable neural flexibility, although adults, with greater knowledge, can continue to imagine and rethink plans more effectively. In short, engaging the brain increases the number of neural connections—and thus, intelligence. We now know that the very circuits associated with pleasure, sexuality, and emotional reward are also involved in language learning, motivation, and memory. In this context, self-awareness—or the capacity to simulate oneself—allowed us to ask the great existential questions: where we come from and where we are headed. From this emerged religion and beliefs in an afterlife. Creativity, consciousness, and language have always been profoundly intertwined.

If we attempt a rough summary of the evolution of speech, the following outline might suffice. It is very likely that Australopithecus remained at the level of phonemes, lacking syntax or grammar. Homo erectus, perhaps, reached the formation of basic words—guided by infantile repetition, as seen in sounds like mama, dada and so forth. The crucial question is this: who, then, was the first to develop truly articulated speech, in tandem with SAP? Some, such as Yuval Harari, argue that articulated speech was merely a recent cultural innovation of Homo sapiens, and that earlier ancestors lacked it altogether. According to this view, it emerged around 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the flourishing of cave art and symbolic thinking among sapiens. But what does the evidence actually suggest? Quite the opposite.

Harari’s view is rooted in a belief in the recent origin of articulated speech—not in fossil or archaeological data. In truth, speech long predates the sapiens of 40,000 years ago, and for several compelling reasons. First, all known human languages share structural traits that indicate a very ancient origin: for example, the universal tendency towards a subject-verb-predicate syntax. Second, linguistic and genetic analyses show that certain African populations are the most divergent, having little or no linguistic connection with others—implying that sapiens who migrated out of Africa did so long before 40,000 years ago, developing their own languages and erasing links to earlier forms. Third, the FOXP2 gene—essential to articulated speech—was already present in early sapiens, suggesting a shared linguistic capability going back some 400,000 years. Moreover, large-scale correlations between genetic groupings and linguistic families exist worldwide, including in creole languages formed by children with no prior cultural exposure to speech. Fourth, in every known language, subject and verb are coordinated to enhance clarity and balance in communication. Fifth, language acquisition occurs rapidly in all cultures during early childhood—an evolutionary trait with deep roots. Sixth, we know from studies of children raised in linguistic isolation that if they are not exposed to speech by a certain age, the ability to acquire language is permanently lost—a deeply ingrained trait we likely shared with our most ancient Homo ancestors.

All in all, articulated speech rests on a robust genetic foundation common to all Homo sapiens. It was not exclusive to us—it was shared with our evolutionary predecessors. The great question, then, remains: when, and with whom, did articulated speech truly evolve? To answer it, we must look far beyond the 40,000-year horizon drawn by Harari.

___

The Erectus Set Out on a Journey

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons