Hakan writes:
>
> To me, it seems likely that language arose just once, in
one
single location, because all the peoples of Earth have a common
origin, but I agree with you that a scenario where several tribes of
people developed language independently of each other is not
impossible, and we will probably never know exactly how it happened.
>
To which Piotr wrote
> The survival of a species consisting of only one small
population would be a miracle from a strictly biological point of
view. Cheetahs are a species that must have been nearly doomed at
some
unknown time in the past but managed to take a few steps back from
the
brink of extinction. As a result, all cheetahs (from tropical Africa
to India) are highly inbred, with all the adverse consequences such
as
vulnerability to the same diseases and environmental threats. By
contrast, there is no evidence of abnormally low genetic diversity
for
humans. I think it's highly likely that the total population of early
anatomically modern Homo sapiens was fully sustainable (that is,
rather large) at any time; and if so, then given the size of
primitive
social units, it was simply too large to support just one language
community.
John here
In actual fact, the Human Genome Project is in fact suggesting that
Homo sapiens went through a similar "genetic bottleneck" as did the
Cheetah. There is less genetic diversity amongst modern humans than
there is in Chimpanzees, which show a genetic diversity of about 1
million years in depth. Humans show a genetic diversity of about
120,000-130,000 years only. Human population at this time may
have been a few thousands only. Strike 1 for a single origin of
language.
Piotr again
> I don't think language was invented like the wheel. Since
we seem to be biologically adapted to using spoken language, this
ability must have developed somehow in the normal course of evolution
(unless you are prepared to believe in another miracle) out of more
primitive forms of communication in a more or less gradual way. In
this scenario, a number of languages could evolve parallelly but not
quite independently, because interbreeding between different
linguistic communities would ensure the propagation of common
biological adaptations related to language use. As a result, all
early
humans would have shared a restricted language typology, but not a
common language.
>
John
Even the wheel was not invented like the wheel. Wheels have been
found on children's toys in Pre-Columban Meso-America, with no
evidence of diffusion from the Old World. It was the presence of
draft animals in Eurasia that made the wheel an important viable
invention for transport, rather than a plaything for children.
People who speak of a single invention of language have difficulty
accounting for "proto-languages" which must have existed in close
proximity, with only small differences from the original. Such
proto-languages, like later languages, probably influenced their
neighbours, like languages do today. The fact that we are in a
situation today of between 12-17 Language Phyla, with a scattering of
linguistic isolates, is in part a measure of the fact that some 5,000
languages are extant today. The peak diversity, I have seen it
suggested, was about 8,500 BCE at which time some 15,000 languages
were existing. With three times the linguistic dversity than today
makes it not impossible that whole Phyla may have existed which have
since disappeared. Some of these phyla may have been descendents of
"protolanguages" that had become modernised by contact with others.
The fact that the linguistic diversity of Africa, and the anomalous
position of Khoisanid languages suggests a little of what the world
circa 8,500 BCE may have been like. Papua New Guinea, Latin America
or Australia also give good models.
<Snip>
Piotr
>suspect that throughout the early history of language the genetic
lineages of human dialects formed a tangled bush with many roots
rather than a neat tree. Some speech communities grew large enough to
split and produce sister languages, but such "vertical" tendencies
were in a dynamic equilibrium with "horizontal" factors causing areal
convergence and creolisation. In any synchronic section a
hypothetical
observer would have observed a small-sized family here, another one
there, and a handful of isolates in between.
John again
The situation seems to have been close to that of human genetics.
The
fact that the mitochondrial Eve is the ancestor of humanity does not
mean that she had no sisters. In fact she was one of tens of
thousands at least. The fact that her sisters may have not left any
descendents over the very long term (over a hundred thousand years)
does not mean she was the only one to leave progeny. What led her
"root" to survive, while those of the others did not is pure luck -
chance only, a being in the right place at the right time for her
descendents.
The tangled bush analogy is certainly what Papua New Guinea provides.
It would seem that in addition to the fission of branches, there is
significant evidence of linguistic fusion as well in some places,
where two parent languages seem to have completely fused to make a
third, which maintains elements of both in almost 50-50 share.
I think we essentially agree here Piotr.
Regards
John