[HN Gopher] Genomic study: our capacity for language emerged at ...
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Genomic study: our capacity for language emerged at least 135k
years ago
Author : wglb
Score : 103 points
Date : 2025-03-17 03:09 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| The paper
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
| appears in Frontiers in Psychology.
| ggm wrote:
| This appears to be an argument for _terminus ante quem_ and
| useful in that sense but it ignores the possibility there is a
| far earlier _terminus post quem_ when the actual language
| capacity emerges.
|
| I think it true(ish) that in a model strongly aligned to a single
| root language the point of segmentation is the last point
| language seen in all post-fragmented states can exist. But I
| don't see why that is also the first point. It's just the one we
| can detect genetically. There will be some subsequent genetic
| evidence perhaps to a specific structural change in the brain, or
| vocal chords, or something else, indicative of language
| emergence.
|
| If holographically defined families tools pre-date this time,
| then abstract concepts were being communicated, even if not
| vocally. Show-and-tell has limits and I would argue strongly
| suggest concepts inherent in language existed to communicate how
| to do the tool making.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our
| language ability, both of which are dependent on our access to
| mind. [Our brains are the tuners we use to select which realms
| of thought we are attempting to focus on. Some people choose to
| tune into universal compassion, some prefer pack-mentality
| behaviors such as racism or religious bigotry (including
| against those who haven't any), some just choose to make money
| or pursue greater pleasure, the list goes on and on.]
|
| Our bodies are mammalian in the basic pattern, but we are
| clearly distinct in ability. It wasn't 6000 frickin years ago,
| but there was a creation event where we instantaneously
| diverged from pure animal life.
|
| Mitochondrial Eve traces us to our root. Thanks again, science!
| nkrisc wrote:
| The word "instantaneously" seems a bit strong, even assuming
| you don't mean it literally. Many different kinds of animals
| apparently exhibit many of the prerequisites or precursor
| traits that seem necessary for language, even if they don't
| posses all of them in order to make the leap humans
| apparently did. Communication is not unique to humans.
| Vocalization is not unique to humans. Awareness of self is
| likely not unique to humans. We are clearly unique in some
| way, but it still seems plausible that it was a gradual (if
| relatively rapid) process that could have occurred from the
| confluence of many unrelated circumstances and abilities that
| has simply only happened once on this planet (as far as we're
| aware). Language, and everything derived from it, is also a
| positive feedback loop that only accelerates its own
| advancement once it occurs. And by looking at the world
| today, it also seems to preclude similar advancements
| happening in other species once it's occurred in one.
| a_gray wrote:
| > Abstract conceptual thinking cannot be separated from our
| language ability
|
| 1. Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to
| throw a ball to a target?)
|
| 2. There is no reason to believe other animals are
| _incapable_ of abstract thinking (although we can clearly see
| they are far less intelligent)
|
| 3. I don't know what your long screed about bigotry and
| religion has to do with language ability
|
| Just imagine how slow university-level maths would be if you
| had to do all the thinking _in words_ in your head.
|
| Sorry if I sound rude, but this is such a common
| misconception people believe in, and it's so blatantly not
| true so I'm baffled people keep on claiming it is
| 'scientific' to believe that language is _identical_ to
| intelligence. No wonder some people insist LLMs are just
| weeks away from becoming AGIs.
| visarga wrote:
| > Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to
| throw a ball to a target?)
|
| If a monkey can do it, it's not very abstract.
| Tor3 wrote:
| When I drive to and from work I drive through several
| places where I have to mentally imagine what several
| other drivers plan to do, and, depending on what they
| actually do, (and what problems they may run into due to
| the slippery road) what the traffic picture will look
| like in a few moments. Which will let me decide if I stop
| right here, for example, so that the car which will
| otherwise be blocked by me and itself will block the
| traffic coming the other way can pass in front of me and
| resolve the (future) situation.. things like that. I have
| to do the whole thought experiment in my brain in a
| second or two. There are no words at all involved in
| that. And LLMs can't do such things as of now. I doubt a
| monkey could either.
|
| At work I do a lot of design thinking. I don't use words
| for that either, that comes later when I document the
| thing.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Spacial dynamics don't need abstract thinking because
| they're concrete. For example: throwing a ball, or
| catching a ball.
|
| Understanding the physics or logic behind complex moving
| pieces does require abstract thinking, but that's not
| what your brain does to perform physical feats.
|
| We saw them, practiced dealing with them, then became
| proficient, or not.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| > 1. Clearly false (what words do you use when you plan to
| throw a ball to a target?)
|
| That's physical, not abstract. Our entire body's neural net
| is used to develop those physical skills. When it comes
| time to catch or throw a ball, no abstract thinking is
| involved, just doing.
|
| If you want to study the physics of throwing a ball, then
| you need abstract thought, but not for just practicing it.
|
| > 2. There is no reason to believe other animals are
| incapable of abstract thinking (although we can clearly see
| they are far less intelligent)
|
| And there is reason to believe they're capable of abstract
| thinking?
|
| > 3. I don't know what your long screed about bigotry and
| religion has to do with language ability
|
| Because we communicate abstract ideas to one another via
| language. Once we acquire a mind-topic, we can then focus
| on it, as per our desire and mental focusability. That's
| why programming is so difficult.
|
| But we can also contemplate our moral basis with respect to
| another mind-topic that teaches us how to abstractly
| evaluate it. It can be called religion or ethics or
| whatever. But we navigate our choices against whatever we
| deem permissible or impermissible, desirable or repellant.
| And we can self-evolve that basis against which we make our
| choices. It's an essential aspect of human nature, and it
| requires abstract concepts such as compassion, harm,
| happiness, sadness, kindness and anger, to name but a few.
|
| > Just imagine how slow university-level maths would be if
| you had to do all the thinking in words in your head.
|
| Just imagine how uni-level maths would be if there were no
| abstract concepts being taught with actual words.
|
| Are you saying that not only did your maths education only
| use diagrams, but that no verbal explanation was involved?
|
| > Sorry if I sound rude, but this is such a common
| misconception people believe in, and it's so blatantly not
| true so I'm baffled people keep on claiming it is
| 'scientific' to believe that language is identical to
| intelligence.
|
| It's not rude, but it is just wrong. For one, I never said
| it was identical to intelligence. Intelligence is
| evaluating an abstract concept net to attempt to evaluate
| how a particular concept relates to it.
|
| Abstract concepts are built on the same logical network
| that facilitates our ability to process and produce
| language. How we build and utilize our ever-evolving
| network results in abilities that we call intelligence.
|
| > No wonder some people insist LLMs are just weeks away
| from becoming AGIs.
|
| That's not me, brother. I'm not even on the LLM hype train,
| much less think they're going to facilitate AGI. They
| probably have a few niche uses, but that's my take on all
| the LLM stuff.
| wbl wrote:
| The invention of writing in Ur has an uncanny alignment with
| the Jewish calendar.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Writing is far older than that.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It looks like they actually say _at least_ 135K years ago, as
| that is the latest it could have happened.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, this is a common occurrence in that something is reported
| to have happened at year X, but in practice it will have
| emerged rouglhy around that time, and never at one fixed moment
| in time. Possibly re-emerged over and over again until it
| stuck.
| vharuck wrote:
| So this finding is in the same vein as mathematicians who can't
| yet prove or disprove a conjecture, but can prove tighter
| restrictions than we knew before. Still interesting, and, more
| importantly, often productive of new paths or methods of
| analysis.
|
| As for the article itself, I'm not sold. The analysis was about
| narrowing down to find the most recent regional split in our
| genetics, with the assumption that language formed before
| humans split across regions. That would work _if_ we assumed
| the capability to develop language rested largely on genetics.
| If a lot of animals could develop a language, then the
| explosion of human language could come from imitation when one
| regional group without a language meets another with a
| language.
|
| >"Human language is qualitatively different because there are
| two things, words and syntax, working together to create this
| very complex system," Miyagawa says. "No other animal has a
| parallel structure in their communication system. And that
| gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts
| and to communicate them to others."
|
| I have seen a lot of ideas about human mental exceptionalism
| fall apart. It wouldn't surprise me to find out in a few years
| that dolphins developed syntax.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| I think we already have decent evidence of animals having
| synytax. Presumably Miyagawa means something like recursive
| syntax.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I agree - and some animals even have semantics, as
| evidenced by those which have some intuitive understanding
| of alarm calls, and even more so when they do so for the
| calls of other species. On the other hand, I doubt they
| know they have syntax and semantics.
| gwervc wrote:
| > On the other hand, I doubt they know they have syntax
| and semantics.
|
| A lot of humans probably ignore it too. Most don't even
| ever heard about phonology, which is more fundamental to
| language than syntax.
| misja111 wrote:
| Exactly. The article literally says "I 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."
|
| The title is wrong.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| On that note, we know that interbreeding between Neanderthals
| and (the ancestors of) modern humans happened during at least
| two periods:
|
| > _Neanderthal-derived genes descend from at least 2
| interbreeding episodes outside of Africa: one about 250,000
| years ago, and another 40,000 to 54,000 years. Interbreeding
| also occurred in other populations which are not ancestral to
| any living person_ [0]
|
| ... which makes me think that it 's more likely that both
| populations had the genomic capacity for language all the way
| back in the first "episode" 250k years ago as well (but to be
| clear, I'm saying it seems _more likely_ to me, not that we can
| safely assume this must be true) .
|
| Yes, I know that "humans are impossibly horny" is a bit of a
| meme, but we're not just talking about sex here, but about
| having offspring that is successful enough within then-existing
| society over many generations, to the point where the
| Neanderthal DNA was absorbed into the common gene pool and
| survived all the way to this day.
|
| It seems very unlikely to me that that would happen unless both
| species were on a comparable level of mental capabilities. So
| we either both evolved language capabilities separately around
| similar times somewhere after 250k years ago, or already had
| the basis for it before our ancestral populations split and
| then later met again.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Interbreeding
| Tor3 wrote:
| Title was modified from what it originally said.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I recommend the book "Why Only Us?" by Chomsky and Berwick on
| this topic. It gets quite technical in places but I still got
| quite a lot of out it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Are Chomsky's ideas on language still taken seriously these
| days?
| nurettin wrote:
| Why not? Do you think they are somehow refuted?
| dekhn wrote:
| https://norvig.com/chomsky.html
| nurettin wrote:
| Ah, thanks. Makes sense. norvig's opinions would be
| highly regarded here, and the existence of LLMs implies
| strong evidence to the contrary.
| ekidd wrote:
| Yes, Chomsky's earlier positions include the idea that
| recursive natural grammars cannot be learnt by machines
| because of the "poverty of the stimulus." But this result
| is only true if you ignore probabilistic grammars. (See
| the Norvig article for some footnotes linking to the
| relevant papers.)
|
| And of course, LLMs generate perfectly reasonable natural
| language without any "universal grammar", or indeed, much
| structure beyond "predict the next token using a lot of
| transformer layers."
|
| I'm pretty sure that most of Chomsky's theoretical model
| is dead at this point, but that's a long discussion and
| he's unlikely to agree.
| macintux wrote:
| That looks like a disagreement with him on the utility of
| machine learning; while I don't know whether Chomsky is
| right about his more fundamental ideas on linguistics,
| that doesn't seem relevant.
| canjobear wrote:
| If you're interested in this topic then you should definitely
| know the Chomsky/Berwick position, but it's not the only view
| and has never been the consensus. For an alternative argument,
| "The Origin of Human Communication" by Michael Tomasello is
| good.
| visarga wrote:
| Chomsky has that wrong theory about language innateness. In
| reality languages that don't fit child brains don't survive.
| It's the other way around!
| foxhop wrote:
| It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give
| a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had
| languages.
| alephnerd wrote:
| We already know that genes regulates speech - for example,
| FOXP2 [0] - and have successfully sequenced the human genome,
| and have started similar initiatives on other archaic human and
| primate species.
|
| Phylogenetic Analysis has been fairly successful already in
| analyzing our genetic history, so I'm not sure why you'd think
| it's impossible.
|
| [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I found this comment interesting.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did.
| ..
|
| >As a quick point and this is quite a late response, having
| the same FOXP2 gene may not be enough. New evidence suggests
|
| >Using statistical software that evaluates gene expression
| based on the type of gene, Vanderbilt graduate student Laura
| Colbran found that Neandertal versions of the gene would have
| pumped out much less FOXP2 protein than expressed in modern
| brains. In living people, a rare mutation that causes members
| of a family to produce half the usual amount of FOXP2 protein
| also triggers severe speech defects, notes Simon Fisher,
| director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in
| Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who discovered the gene.
| simne wrote:
| There are many cases, when animals (or birds) literally speak
| and even showing very human like behavior on talking.
|
| But, as I could see, only humans have so significant language
| culture that lead to great number of manuscripts.
|
| I will even accent - little number of humans write books, but
| near none other species do this.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I guess they mean " _complex enough
| language_ " to discard isolated words and consider only "
| _languages_ " that have " _sentences that may have 5 words_ "
| or some more accurate criteria.
| pfdietz wrote:
| How do we know Neanderthals had languages? I'm curious what the
| evidence is for this.
| vessenes wrote:
| Well, we know that they could communicate (or be attractive
| enough) to interbreed with Homo sapiens -- presumably they
| weren't the genetically stronger species because their DNA is
| generally 1-3% represented in ours.
|
| We don't know, as you note. But the genetic evidence combined
| with tool use and their large Supra-orbital indices (fairly
| big brains, if shaped differently than ours) all would make
| that the preferred prior I'd say.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's not clear how much interbreeding there was. It doesn't
| take many introgression events over the millennia to show
| up in the genetic record. And, to put it delicately, it's
| not clear any communication was involved in these events.
| brador wrote:
| Existence of language requires 2 mutation trees, one for hearing,
| one for sound making. Could this be why it took so long?
| api wrote:
| There's a lot of this in evolution. Look into how possibly
| unlikely the emergence of eukaryotes was.
|
| The most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is just that
| high intelligence is incredibly rare.
|
| Why are we here? Because we are having this conversation over a
| global digital network. The universe is probably full of
| bubbling mats of bacteria.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why is emergence of bacteria not rare? We don't know in
| sufficient detail how Origin of Life happened to constrain
| its probability very well.
| firecall wrote:
| Sign language doesn't need hearing or sound making!
|
| I suppose language requires a means of communication and
| someone to communicate to at a minimum. Although actually we
| think in a language so I guess we don't need someone to
| communicate to.
|
| Then maybe language creation just requires the right sort of
| thoughts?
|
| Edit:
|
| I should have read the article first LOL!
|
| They say as much:
|
| > "Language is both a cognitive system and a communication
| system," Miyagawa says. "My guess is prior to 135,000 years
| ago, it did start out as a private cognitive system, but
| relatively quickly that turned into a communications system."
| nkrisc wrote:
| A good question would be whether sign language can exist at
| all without spoken language (and its related adaptations)
| having first existed within the species.
| 0xdada wrote:
| But hearing and sound making both have many other uses.
| Jellyfish can "hear", crickets can make noises. I'm guessing we
| had both of these long before language.
| simne wrote:
| I wonder, if it is possible to detect what exactly changed in
| brain, as this could be a clue to create GAI.
|
| Even strict list of changed genes could be extremely helpful for
| AI progress.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Hey, heads up. It's now 2025, machines have _mastered_
| language, displaying better linguistic abilities than those of
| a large percentage of the population. They also do so using a
| small fraction of the neurons and synapses found in the human
| brain, despite being able to express themselves in tens or
| hundreds of languages and across an extremely wide range of
| subjects (much beyond the average general knowledge of human
| beings), dispelling the myth that artificial neurons are much
| less powerful than the real ones.
| LEDThereBeLight wrote:
| No one said artificial neurons are "less powerful." They just
| work differently, and the way we "train" them is much less
| efficient and extensible. So of course there's value in
| trying to understand how our language mechanisms work.
| simne wrote:
| LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat. Neural
| system of mammals is structured, as I understand, neocortex
| consists of about 100 millions structures each ~ 100x400
| neurons, something like this. Anyway, just from calculation
| of human thinking delay appear human NN is just about 500
| layers.
|
| Second difference, natural I are feed-forward network, not
| back propagated as typical AI NN, because natural use some
| chemical method to "calculate" parameters.
|
| I think, with right structure and some FF method, GAI is
| already technically achieved.
|
| PS FF NN already exist, but problem that it now using
| classical method of differential equations which is
| prohibiting real use, because too much computation need.
| visarga wrote:
| > LLMs are interest case, but they are nearly flat.
|
| They are less specialized than brains, but compensate
| millions of years of evolutionary adaptation with a larger
| corpus of text, about the same size as 11,000 people use in
| their lifetime, assuming 1B words/human.
|
| Interestingly, humans needed 10 million times more text for
| cultural evolution, based on an estimate of 110 billion
| humans who ever lived.
|
| So making progress is millions of times harder than
| catching up.
| ksenzee wrote:
| "Express themselves": such a wealth of wrongness packed into
| two short words. There is no self involved. There is no
| expression involved.
| Tor3 wrote:
| The article doesn't say what the headline says. At all. Never in
| the article does it say that "our capacity for language emerged
| 135,000 years ago". What the article says is that they have
| genomically traced our species back to around 135,000 years ago
| to the point where we started splitting off in different groups,
| and as we all have the capacity for language we must have had it
| at the point of split as well (before that all could be said to
| be in the same local group. Possible, what with those population
| bottlenecks and everything).
|
| There's nothing in there saying there wasn't language before, nor
| why it shouldn't have been present much earlier. Early enough
| that e.g. Neanderthals could equally well be covered.
| burnte wrote:
| Thank you, I read the same thing! Glad folks are commenting on
| this.
| burnte wrote:
| The above comment feels really spammy/AI generated but I
| promise I'm a real human and just genuinely appreciated
| someone mentioning the disparity between the headline and the
| actual research statement.
| tgv wrote:
| Theoretically, it is possible language developed later. Some
| people hold the position that there is no specific language
| hardware in our brains, and that language is the result of a
| socio-cultural process (which then would spread).
| jajko wrote:
| Some animals have provably some sort of language, and most
| probably have them for tens of millions of years, or their
| ancestors did. No reason to believe there was no language
| before those 135k. Clearly you don't need something very
| special and unique to us.
|
| Now where is the threshold when we consider something a
| proper language and something... less lets say I don't know.
| Science probably doesn't have a clue neither. The evolution
| was probably very gradual, ie every 1000 years the complexity
| grew up by a notch, on average. Compound it to a million
| years.
| kensai wrote:
| What about the speech centers? Broca and Wernicke areals is
| the closest thing humans have to language hardware.
| gaoshan wrote:
| If the title cannot be edited then the post should be removed,
| IMO.
| bawolff wrote:
| What distinction are you trying to draw? To me the headline and
| the claim the article makes are effectively the same, just with
| the article claim dotting some i's in terms of assumptions
| being made (it seems reasonable to simify a headline).
| p00dles wrote:
| Does beginning a submission title with "Genomic study:" provide
| an air of credibility? As in, before any reference to what is
| being studied, genomic study is mentioned. I'm actually curious.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think it's less about credibility in general rather than the
| source of the information. It could have been some sort of
| archaeological evidence instead.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I'd say those guys back then started fuddling around with the
| definition of genocide about that time too.
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