Human speech 350,000 years ago?

I used to make lots of anthropological posts here but haven't for a few
years. There are reports out that the hominid hearing apparatus was
tuned to hear the sounds we make in speech by at least 350,000 years
ago. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996053

The interesting thing about this is that this is about the same time
that the hypoglossal canal, the hole throught he skull which carries the
enervation for fine motor control of our tongues achieved the modern
size.

"These anatomical findings suggest that the vocal capabilities of
Neanderthals were the same as those of humans today. Furthermore, the
vocal abilities of Australopithecus were not advanced significantly over
those of chimpanzees whereas those of Homo may have been essentially
modern by at least 400,000 years ago. Thus, human vocal abilities may
have appeared much earlier in time than the first archaeological
evidence for symbolic behavior." ~ Richard F. Kay, "The Hypoglossal
Canal and the Origin of Human Vocal Behavior," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
USA, 95(1998):5417-5419, p. 5417

        "We also measured this hole in the skulls of a number
of fossil hominids. Australopithecines have small canals
like those of apes, suggesting that they couldn't talk. But
later Homo skulls, beginning with a 400,000-year-old skull
from Zambia, all have big, humanlike hypoglossal canals.
These are also the skulls that were first to house brains as
big as our own. On these counts our work supports
Lieberman's ideas. We disagree only on the matter of
Neanderthals. While he claims their throats couldn't have
produced human speech, we find that their skulls also had
human-size canals for the hypoglossal nerve, suggesting that
they could indeed talk.
        "In short several lines of evidence suggest that
neither the australopithecines nor the early, small-brained
species of Homo could talk. Only around half a million
years ago did the first big-brained Homo evolve language.
The verdict is still out on the language abilities of
Neanderthals. I tend to think that they must have had fully
human language. After all, they had brains larger than
those of most modern humans, made elegant stone tools, and
new how to use fire. But if Lieberman and his friends are
right about those vowels, Neanderthals may have sounded
something like the Swedish chef on The Muppet Show."~ Matt
Cartmill, "The Gift of Gab," Discover, Nov. 1998, pp 56-64,
p. 62

The implications of this data is devastating to the traditional old
earth apologetical views, like those of Hugh Ross. It is very difficult
to see how one can have non-spiritual talking primates for nearly
300,000 years before the advent of true man. This is what Hugh Ross
advocates when shown in the light of this data.

    "While bipedal, tool-using, large brained hominids roamed the earth
at least as long ago as one million years, evidence for religious relics
and altars dates back only 8,000 to 24,000 years. Thus the secular
anthropological date for the first spirit creatures is in complete
agreement with the biblical date.
"Some differences, however, between the Bible and secular anthropology
remain. The Bible not only would deny that the hominids were men, it
also would deny that Adam was physically descended from these hominids.
Even here, support from anthropology is emerging. New evidence
indicates that the hominid species may have gone extinct before, or as a
result of, the appearance of modern man. At the very least, abrupt
transitions between [hominid]species is widely acknowledged. ~ Hugh
Ross, The Fingerprint of God, (Orange: Promise Publishing, 1991), p.
159-160.

And I would also point people to my article Morton, G. R. (2002)
"Language at the Dawn of Humanity," Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith, 54(2002):3:193-194. This discusses some work presented
at the 2001 meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, There are
two click languages Sandawe and Hadza which are spoken by two groups
which were believed to be related although for years linguists had noted
that the languages themselves seem very very distant in spite of sharing
the same characteristic of having click sounds included in the language.
Alec Knight, Joanna Mountain and colleagues analyzed the Y chromosomes
of the two groups and found that these two groups were genetically the
most distant pair of populations on earth. In other words, their last
common ancestor was as long ago as 100,000 years. The abstract says:

Y chromosome and mtDNA variation in linguistically diverse peoples of
Tanzania: Ancient roots and ancient clicks. A. Knight1, P.A. Underhill2,
H.M. Mortensen1, A.A. Lin2, D. Louis1, M. Ruhlen1, J.L. Mountain1. 1)
Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA; 2) Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

   "We analyzed genetic variation in 122 "unrelated" individuals from
the vicinity of Lake Eyasi in north-central Tanzania, to recover aspects
of population history and human evolution. Representatives of the four
linguistic phyla of Africa were studied, including 50 Hadzabe (or Hadza)
foragers. We present a Y chromosome phylogeny derived from unique event
polymorphisms (UEPs). We also present Y chromosome microsatellite
variation within UEP-defined clades, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) fragment
polymorphisms, and nucleotide sequences of both mtDNA control region
hypervariable segments. When compared to other African population data,
our results reveal elements of prehistory relevant to the evolution of
anatomically modern humans, including migration, gene flow, and
language. We were able to distinguish recent gene flow from ancient
demographic signatures. Hadzabe are strongly differentiated from other
groups, have high genetic diversity, and exhibit comparatively great
genetic distance from the !Kung of southern Africa, suggesting great
antiquity for click (Khoisan) languages. **end of abstract**

What they concluded was that these two groups of people shared a common
genetic and linguistic history 100,000 years ago but went their separate
ways in both areas. The data seems to indicate that one of the earliest
human languages belongs to the click family (Khoisan family).

Now that data demonstrates the likelihood of language at least 100,000
years ago, not the 60 kyr of Hugh Ross's view. And the anatomical data
seems to indicate that mankind was speaking 3 times longer. Theology
and apologetics simply must deal with this issue.
Received on Fri Jul 2 15:45:14 2004