That would mean that speech—and, therefore, language—couldn’t have evolved until the arrival of anatomically modern Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago (or, per a fossil discovery from 2017, about 300,000 years ago). This line of thinking became known as laryngeal descent theory, or LDT.
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A new review paper, published yesterday in Science Advances, aims to tear down the LDT completely. Its authors argue that the anatomical ingredients for speech were present in our ancestors much earlier than 200,000 years ago. In fact, they propose that the necessary equipment—specifically, the throat shape and motor control that produce distinguishable vowels—has been around as long as 27 million years, when humans and Old World monkeys (baboons, mandrills, and the like) last shared a common ancestor.
Speech had to be an incredible advantage in group hunting, it's easy to believe it evolved originally for this purpose. If not during man's cooperative hunting period, that why and how after many millions of years of evolution did speech evolve ?
OR
A new review paper, published yesterday in Science Advances, aims to tear down the LDT completely. Its authors argue that the anatomical ingredients for speech were present in our ancestors much earlier than 200,000 years ago. In fact, they propose that the necessary equipment—specifically, the throat shape and motor control that produce distinguishable vowels—has been around as long as 27 million years, when humans and Old World monkeys (baboons, mandrills, and the like) last shared a common ancestor.
Speech had to be an incredible advantage in group hunting, it's easy to believe it evolved originally for this purpose. If not during man's cooperative hunting period, that why and how after many millions of years of evolution did speech evolve ?
