sastscote Mercury Reader
[i smithsonianmag.com
Human Ancestors May Have Evolved
the Physical Ability to Speak More
Than 25 Million Years Ago
Send to Kindle
Speech is part of what makes us uniquely human, but what if our ancestors had
the ability to speak millions of years before Homo sapiens even existed?
Some scientists have theorized that it only became physically possible to speak a
wide range of essential vowel sounds when our vocal anatomy changed with the
rise of Homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago. This theoretical timeline means
that language, where the brain associates words with objects or concepts and
arranges them in complex sentences, would have been a relatively recent
phenomenon, developing with or after our ability to speak a diverse array of
sounds.
But a comprehensive study analyzing several decades of research, from primate
vocalization to vocal tract acoustic modeling, suggests the idea that only Homo
sapiens could physically talk may miss the mark when it comes to our ancestors’
first speech—by a staggering 27 million years or more.
Linguist Thomas Sawallis of the University of Alabama and colleagues stress that
functional human speech is rooted in the ability to form contrasting vowel
sounds. These critical sounds are all that differentiates entirely unrelated words
like “bat,” “bought,” “but” and "bet.” Building a language without the variety of
these contrasting vowel sounds would be nearly impossible. The research team’s
new study in Science Advances concludes that early human ancestors, long before
hips Aww. smithsonianmag.convselence-naturemhuman-ancestore-may-nave-avolvas-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-180973758) 1/6sarnai2019 Mercury Reader
even the evolution of the genus Homo, actually did have the anatomical ability to
make such sounds.
When, over all those millions of years, human ancestors developed the cognitive
ability to use speech to converse with each other remains an open question.
“what we’re saying is not that anyone had language any earlier,” Sawallis says.
fe’re saying that the ability to make contrasting vowel quali
ies dates back at
least to our last common ancestor with Old World monkeys like macaques and
baboons. That means the speech system had at least 100 times longer to evolve
than we thought.”
A screaming guinea baboon. Studies that have found monkeys such as baboons and macaques can make
contrasting vowel sounds suggest that the last common ancestor between these primates and modern humans
could make the sounds too. ( Andyworks via Getty Images)
The study explores the origins and abilities of speech with an eye toward the
physical processes that primates use to produce sounds. “Speech involves the
biology of using your vocal tracts and your lips. Messing around with that as a
hitps Aww. smithsonianmag.convselence-naturemhuman-ancestore-may-nave-avolvas-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-180975758) 216sani2019 Mercury Reader
muscular production, and getting a sound out that can get into somebody else’s
ear that can identify what was intended as sounds—that’s speech,” Sawallis says.
A long-popular theory of the development of the larynx, first advanced in the
1960s, held that an evolutionary shift in throat structure was what enabled
modern humans, and only modern humans, to begin speaking. The human larynx
is much lower, relative to cervical vertebrae, than that of our ancestors and other
primates. The descent of the larynx, the theory held, was what elongated our
vocal tract and enabled modern humans to begin making the contrasting vowel
sounds that were the early building blocks of language. “The question is whether
that’s the key to allowing a full, usable set of contrasting vowels,” Sawallis says.
“That’s what we have, we believe, definitely disproven with the research that’s
led up to this article.”
The team reviewed several studies of primate vocalization and communication,
and they used data from earlier research to model speech sounds. Several lines of
research suggested the same conclusion—humans aren’t alone in their ability to
make these sounds, so the idea that our unique anatomy enabled them doesn’t
appear to hold water.
Cognitive scientist Tecumseh Fitch and colleagues in 2016 used X-ray videos to
study the vocal tracts of living macaques and found that monkey vocal tracts are
speech ready. “Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech
capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy.
Macaques have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to
control it,” the study authors wrote in Science Advances.
In a 2017 study, a team led by speech and cognition researcher Louis-Jean Boé of
Université Grenoble Alpes in France, also lead author of the new study, came to
the same conclusion as the macaque study. By analyzing over 1,300 naturally
produced vocalizations from a baboon troop, they determined that the primates
could make contrasting proto-vowel sounds.
tps. smithsonianmag.convsclence-naturethuman-ancestors-may-nave-svolved-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-18097375@) 316sani2019 Mercury Reader
Some animals, including birds and even elephants, can mimic human voice
sounds by using an entirely different anatomy. These amazing mimics illustrate
how cautious scientists must be in assigning sounds or speech to specific places
in the evolutionary journey of human languages.
“Of course, vocalization involves vowel production and of course, vocalization is
a vital evolutionary precursor to speech, “ says paleoanthropologist Rick Potts of
Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, in an email. “The greatest danger is
equating how other primates and mammals produce vowels as part of their
vocalizations with the evolutionary basis for speech.”
While anatomy of the larynx and vocal tract help make speech physically
possible, they aren’t all that’s required. The brain must also be capable of
controlling the production and the hearing of human speech sounds. In fact,
recent research suggests that while living primates can have a wide vocal range—
at least 38 different calls in the case of the bonobo—they simply don’t have the
brainpower to develop language.
“The fact that a monkey vocal tract could produce speech (with a human like
brain in control) does not mean that they did. It just shows that the vocal tract is
not the bottle-neck,” says University of Vienna biologist and cognitive scientist
Tecumseh Fitch in an email.
Where, when, and in which human ancestor species a language-ready brain
developed is a complicated and fascinating field for further research. By studying
the way our primate relatives like chimpanzees use their hands naturally, and can
learn human signs, some scientists suspect that language developed first through
gestures and was later made much more efficient through speech.
Other researchers are searching backward in time for evidence of a cognitive leap
forward which produced complex thought and, in turn, speech language abilities
able to express those thoughts to others—perhaps with speech and language co-
tps. smithsonianmag.comsclence-naturethuman-ancestors-may-nave-svolved-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-18097375@) 4/6sarns2019 Mercury Reader
‘Amale Japanese macaque or snow monkey a making threatening expression in Jigokudani Yean-Koen National
Park. ( Anup Shah)
evolving at the same time.
Language doesn’t leave fossil evidence, but more enduring examples of how our
ancestors used their brains, like tool-making techniques, might be used as proxies
to better understand when ancient humans started using complex symbols—
visual or vocal—to communicate with one another.
For example, some brain studies show that language uses similar parts of the
brain as toolmaking, and suggest that by the time the earliest advanced stone
tools emerged 2 million years ago, their makers might have had the ability to talk
to each other. Some kind of cognitive advance in human prehistory could have
launched both skills.
Sawallis says that the search for such advances in brain power can be greatly
expanded, millions of years back in time, now that it’s been shown that the
tps. smithsonianmag.convsclence-naturethuman-ancestors-may-nave-svolved-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-18097375@) 5/6sanarore Mercury Reader
physical ability for speech has existed for so long. “You might think of the brain
as a driver and the vocal tract as a vehicle,” he says. “There’s no amount of
computing power that can make the Wright Flyer supersonic. The physics of the
object define what that object can do in the world. So what we’re talking about is
not the neurological component that drives the vocal tract, we’re just talking
about the physics of the vocal tract.”
How long did it take for our ancestors to find the voices they were equipped with
all along? The question is a fascinating one, but unfortunately their bones and
stones remain silent.
Like this article?
SIGN UP for our newsletter
hy
73959)
ew smithsonianmag comyscience-naturefhuman-ancestors-may-have-evolved-physical-ability-speak-more-25-milion-years-ago-1809
tps. smithsonianmag convsclence-naturethuman-ancestors-may-nave-svolved-physical-abity-speak-more-25-millon-years-ago-16097375@!
68