This study suggests language began in Africa.
http://online
http://online
The world's 6,000 or so modern languages may have all descended from one ancestral tongue spoken by early African humans between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests.
Benjamin Spink - It seems like atkinson wants to have his cake and eat it too. If the phoneme pool was largest in Africa and disseminated as humans spread out, doesn't that suggest an opposing pattern of devolution rather than evolution? How would humans evolve to the point of 141 phonemes if "there is a gradual loss of genetic variation and complexity in the breakaway group."? I'm sure they might say that the humans stayed together in one group rather than breaking off and spreading prior to 10,000 BC or 50,000 or whenever...but my question would be: 'what causes this gradual loss to happen in the breakaway groups??' Isn't it more likely that whatever causes the loss in breakaway groups (perhaps some form of the 2nd law of thermodynamics) also causes the loss of genetic variation and complexity in new generations? Basically isn't he showing that language tends to break down rather than progress?
These two quotes were especially interesting to me:
"The origin of early languages is fuzzier. Truly ancient languages haven't left empirical evidence that scientists can study. And many linguists believe it is hard to say anything definitive about languages prior to 8,000 years ago, as their relationships would have become jumbled over the millennia."
"Only humans have the biological capacity to communicate with a rich language based on symbols and rules, enabling us to pass on cultural ideas to future generations. Without language, culture as we know it wouldn't exist, so scientists are keen to pin down where it sprang from."
It seems like his findings might be better explained by divine creation which uniquely endowed humans with abstract thought and language and relationship on a different plane to reflect the Creator.
These two quotes were especially interesting to me:
"The origin of early languages is fuzzier. Truly ancient languages haven't left empirical evidence that scientists can study. And many linguists believe it is hard to say anything definitive about languages prior to 8,000 years ago, as their relationships would have become jumbled over the millennia."
"Only humans have the biological capacity to communicate with a rich language based on symbols and rules, enabling us to pass on cultural ideas to future generations. Without language, culture as we know it wouldn't exist, so scientists are keen to pin down where it sprang from."
It seems like his findings might be better explained by divine creation which uniquely endowed humans with abstract thought and language and relationship on a different plane to reflect the Creator.
No comments:
Post a Comment