WHEN DID WE START TO SPEAK?

Michael Balter wrote a great article on this. To summarize, there has been a lot of debate between researchers regarding this issue. The estimations run back from 50,000 years to as far back as to over 2 million years ago. Approximately 1.75 million years ago, our human ancestors ( hominids ) created a technological breakthrough. They had started to create hand axes and other weapons and tools in such a way that required both planning and precision to a degree that had never done before. However, there is a study that might give us a glimpse of hope in answering this question.

The researchers recruited 184 students from the University of St. Andrews in the UK. The students were divided into 5 groups. All groups were given the task of creating Oldowan flakes (hitting a stone “core” with a stone “hammer” in such a way that a flake sharp enough to butcher an animal is struck of) The first group had to create an Oldowan flake by simply being presented with a hammer, core, and some examples of the tool looks like in the end and then simply starting to create them. In the next group, a second student would try to learn how to create the tools by simply watching the first subject and trying to duplicate what he or she did with no interaction at all between them. In the third group the participants were showing one another how they were creating those flakes, however there was no gesturing. Group four were communicating by gestures and without words. However group five, there was a ” teacher” instructing the students by saying whatever was necessary.

There were over 6,000 flakes that were made and, unsurprisingly, the group that made the most was groups 4 and 5 made a large proportion of the flakes and the group that made the least amount was group 1.

Those results led the researchers to conclude that even 2 million years ago the creation of these object would need the capacity to teach and to and also it would probably require protolanguage (the beginnings of language.)

However there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. For one, today we have much more knowledge about many different topics than we used to have 2 million years ago. We also were growing up by being spoken to and we were taught how to use language.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST LANGUAGE AND WHICH CIVILIZATION FIRST DEVELOPED IT?

Answering the the first part of the question is very difficult, language has undergone an enormous amount of evolution just as humans and other creatures have. This is why it is extremely difficult to pinpoint what language was spoken first. But based on a lot of evidence, it is believed that protohuman language is the common ancestor of all ~3,000 – ~8,000 living languages spoken today by spreading all over Africa and over to every other continent. It also started to evolve from tribe to tribe.

THE LANGUAGE TREE: HOW ONE LANGUAGE BECAME MANY.

When the first tribes were created it eventually spread apart into two. members of one tribe would stay and the other tribe would leave in order to find more resources. This process would go on and on millennia ago and eventually after each tribe settled in their new place they would overtime create their own societies and depending on the surroundings they settled in. Every tribe would be isolated from one another and they would encounter different species to hunt, different predators, different food and different neighbours. As time past, every tribe would create their own culture, and eventually they would create their own languages and dialects.