Humans know how to say it thanks to a genetic mutation

People can speak and use a particular language derived from what causes is still a challenging question for the scientific world.

Why can people speak and have their own language?

120,000 years ago, in the region of Oued Djebbana (present-day northern Algeria), people began using shells that appeared in the Mediterranean to make them a strange jewelry . But what caught many anthropologists' attention was the location of Oued Djebbana: 200km from the nearest coast.

Immediately, archaeologists and anthropologists have teamed up to study and come to the conclusion that these shells are not jewelry, but a form of "cash" that is then used to exchange among tribe in Africa at that time. Now a question arises: How can our ancestors communicate with each other when at least 115,000 years after the first written scripts were born? The answer is that many sympathizers are human beings who have formed a sound of their own to communicate, or later it is called "language".

Professor Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, who is a researcher on human evolution, said that all species have their own sound communication patterns from growls and howls, Chest beats or stomping . Each sound that represents an individual's will for other objects in the same species and people is not outside of this category. But unlike other animals, humans are superior because our brains are much more developed and so we have a better understanding of the world around us.

In addition, Philip Lieberman, a professor of cognitive and linguistics at Brown University in the United States, said the crux of having a " personal voice " is that our mouth has evolved some time ago. 100,000 years when they become smaller and not protruding like before. The human race now has a more flexible tongue and the larynx has gradually developed markedly. In addition, the human larynx also starts to emit sounds of a specific frequency that only within the species will understand.

In a 2009 study, US scientists identified the FOXP2 gene mutation as a cause for human speech.

The results of the study published in the journal "Nature" indicate that this mutation has helped humans develop their language and speaking abilities, although this is not the only reason people can speak.

Scientists have found that humans have more than 100 distinct genes compared to the gibbons, the closest relatives of humankind, especially the FOXP2 gene has a completely different structure and activity in gibbons and humans. Over time, this gene has changed to help humans develop their speaking abilities.

Professor Daniel Geschwind, an expert in neurology, psychiatry and genetics at the University of California (USA), said the FOXP2 gene mutation plays a huge role in making the difference between humans and gibbons. .

According to scientists, in the evolution of gibbons , the FOXP2 gene in humans has undergone two important mutations. Perhaps thanks to that, humans gradually developed a complex pronunciation system, allowing the expression of things and phenomena. Analyzes of the jawbone, oral cavity and teeth of prehistoric humans show that people may have been talking about 130,000 years ago. However, so far, people have not been able to determine the time of language formation.

This is not the first time, scientists have discovered the role of the FOXP2 gene in human speech. Previously, a research group at Oxford University (UK) also found that this gene is involved in the process of language formation in humans and some animals. The researchers found this gene in many language-learning birds, including sparrows, swiftlets and hummingbirds . /.

Human language origin is the scholarly topic discussed for centuries. However, there is no consensus on the origin or age of human language. A problem that makes topics very difficult to study is the lack of direct evidence. Therefore, experts who need to study the origin of language must draw conclusions from other types of evidence such as fossils, archaeological evidence, diversity of modern languages, language studies. language, and comparisons between human language and communication systems available to other animals (especially primates).

Many people believe that the origin of language may be closely related to the origin of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement on the impact and orientation of this connection. The lack of direct evidence has led many scholars to consider this whole topic unsuitable for a serious study. In 1866, the Paris Linguistics Association banned all debates on this issue, a ban that affected most Western countries until the end of the 20th century.

Today there are many theories about " how, why, when, where " language may have appeared. Despite this, consensus seems to be rarer than the time of a hundred years ago, when Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection caused a series of "in-room" speculations on the subject. However, since the early 1990s some linguists, archaeologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others have tried to find a way to solve this "most difficult problem in science" with new method. Note that evolutionary theory recognizes the development of language as an important milestone in human development.