From Newsgroup: sci.lang


I have just finished "Life and Adventures of William
Buckley", an English convict sent to Australia in 1802.
He escaped in 1803 and spent 30 years living with the
Aborigines. And then come across this article and
paper. It occurs to me that language was present when
they arrived in Australia. That's 50 to 65 kya
according to estimates I've seen. That strikes me
as a reliable minimum


https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-did-human-language-emerge-0314

It is a deep question, from deep in our history:
When did human language as we know it emerge? A
new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique
language capacity was present at least 135,000 years
ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social
use 100,000 years ago.

Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years
old. Estimates of when language originated vary
widely, based on different forms of evidence, from
fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new
analysis took a different approach. They reasoned that
since all human languages likely have a common
origin rCo as the researchers strongly think rCo the key
question is how far back in time regional groups began
spreading around the world.

rCLThe logic is very simple,rCY says Shigeru Miyagawa, an
MIT professor and co-author of a new paper summarizing
the results. rCLEvery population branching across the
globe has human language, and all languages are
related.rCY Based on what the genomics data indicate
about the geographic divergence of early human
populations, he adds, rCLI think we can say with a fair
amount of certainty that the first split occurred about
135,000 years ago, so human language capacity must have
been present by then, or before.rCY
...
The new paper examines 15 genetic studies of different
varieties, published over the past 18 years: Three used
data about the inherited Y chromosome, three examined
mitochondrial DNA, and nine were whole-genome studies.

All told, the data from these studies suggest an initial
regional branching of humans about 135,000 years ago.
That is, after the emergence of Homo sapiens, groups of
people subsequently moved apart geographically, and some
resulting genetic variations have developed, over time,
among the different regional subpopulations. The amount
of genetic variation shown in the studies allows
researchers to estimate the point in time at which Homo
sapiens was still one regionally undivided group.
...


https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1503900/full

Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens
population 135 thousand years ago

Abstract
Recent genome-level studies on the divergence
of early Homo sapiens, based on single nucleotide
polymorphisms, suggest that the initial population
division within H. sapiens from the original stem
occurred approximately 135 thousand years ago.
Given that this and all subsequent divisions led
to populations with full linguistic capacity, it
is reasonable to assume that the potential for
language must have been present at the latest by
around 135 thousand years ago, before the first
division occurred. Had linguistic capacity
developed later, we would expect to find some
modern human populations without language, or with
some fundamentally different mode of communication.
Neither is the case. While current evidence does
not tell us exactly when language itself appeared,
the genomic studies do allow a fairly accurate
estimate of the time by which linguistic capacity
must have been present in the modern human lineage.
Based on the lower boundary of 135 thousand years
ago for language, we propose that language may
have triggered the widespread appearance of modern
human behavior approximately 100 thousand years ago.









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From Newsgroup: sci.lang


Ar an triochad|| l|i de m|! Meitheamh, scr|!obh Tilde:

I have just finished "Life and Adventures of William Buckley", an English convict sent to Australia in 1802. He escaped in 1803 and spent 30 years living with the Aborigines. And then come across this article and paper. It occurs to me that language was present when they arrived in Australia. That's 50 to 65 kya according to estimates I've seen. That strikes me as a reliable minimum

Why was he (or why are you) certain that language was present when they arrived in Australia? I think it probably was but I donrCOt know that we can assert that.

https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-did-human-language-emerge-0314

It is a deep question, from deep in our history: When did human language as we know it emerge? A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.

Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years old. Estimates of when language originated vary widely, based on different forms of evidence, from fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new analysis took a different approach. They reasoned that since all human languages likely have a common origin rCo as the researchers strongly think

ThererCOs no strong reason to think this. Cf that sign languages do not have
a common origin and that writing systems do not have a common origin (e.g. the Cherokee syllabary, developed without knowledge of the details of European writing systems but with the knowledge of their function.)
--
rCyAs I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stoutrCO
(C. Moore)
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From Newsgroup: sci.lang

Aidan Kehoe wrote:

Ar an triochad|| l|i de m|! Meitheamh, scr|!obh Tilde:

> I have just finished "Life and Adventures of William Buckley", an English
> convict sent to Australia in 1802. He escaped in 1803 and spent 30 years
> living with the Aborigines. And then come across this article and paper. It
> occurs to me that language was present when they arrived in Australia.
> That's 50 to 65 kya according to estimates I've seen. That strikes me as a
> reliable minimum

Why was he (or why are you) certain that language was present when they arrived
in Australia? I think it probably was but I donrCOt know that we can assert that.

Buckley learned the language of the group he ended up with and
its clear from the narrative that other groups there had
language as well. It's seems even more fantastic that they
entered Australia and then on their own developed hundred of
languages.

https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-did-human-language-emerge-0314

>
> It is a deep question, from deep in our history: When did human language as
> we know it emerge? A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique
> language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently,
> language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.
>
> Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years old. Estimates of when
> language originated vary widely, based on different forms of evidence, from
> fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new analysis took a
> different approach. They reasoned that since all human languages likely have
> a common origin rCo as the researchers strongly think

ThererCOs no strong reason to think this. Cf that sign languages do not have a common origin and that writing systems do not have a common origin (e.g. the
Cherokee syllabary, developed without knowledge of the details of European writing systems but with the knowledge of their function.)

Sign languages are associated with the spoken language of
the culture/area they occur in.

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From Newsgroup: sci.lang

On 2025-07-01, Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Sign languages are associated with the spoken language of
the culture/area they occur in.

Linguistically they are not. They are socially linked by way of
the school infrastructure.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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From Newsgroup: sci.lang

On 2025-07-01, Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> wrote:

fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new
analysis took a different approach. They reasoned that
since all human languages likely have a common
origin rCo as the researchers strongly think rCo the key
question is how far back in time regional groups began
spreading around the world.

For a different view, see Piotr G-asiorowski's old blog entry

Too Many to Communicate https://langevo.blogspot.com/2013/04/too-many-to-communicate.html
Question 1: Was there a time when all humans spoke the same
language?
[...]
No single language, then; at any rate not in anatomically modern
humans. We have always been multilingual.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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