"Revised Timeline: Humans' 1.6 Million-Year-Old Language Origins"

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Source: The Independent
"Revised Timeline: Humans' 1.6 Million-Year-Old Language Origins"
Photo: The Independent
TL;DR

New research by British archaeologist Steven Mithen suggests that early humans likely developed rudimentary language around 1.6 million years ago in eastern or southern Africa, challenging the previous belief that humans only started speaking around 200,000 years ago. The analysis is based on a comprehensive study of archaeological, genetic, neurological, and linguistic evidence, indicating that the emergence of language was part of a suite of human evolution and other developments between two and 1.5 million years ago. This birth of language represented the beginning of linguistic development, with language gradually becoming more complex over hundreds of thousands of years.

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