An article published in “The Daily Mail” in England
After studying 500 languages,
they could be traced back to a Stone Age dialect. The further away from Africa a language is spoken, the fewer distinct sounds it
has. The study also found that speech evolved 'at least 100,000 years ago'.
The article states that “Every language in the world - from English to
Mandarin - evolved from a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.”
After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found
compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect
spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.
The findings don't just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa - they also show that speech evolved at least
100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.”
There is now compelling evidence that the first modern humans evolved in
Africa around 200,000 to 150,000 years ago.
Around 70,000 years ago, these early humans began to migrate from the
continent, eventually spreading around the rest of the world.
Although most scientists agree with this 'Out of Africa' theory, they
are less sure when our ancestors began to talk.
Some have argued that language evolved independently in different parts
of the world, while others say it evolved just once, and that all languages are
descended from a single ancestral mother tongue.
Dr Atkinson, of Auckland
University
In a paper published April 17, 2011 in Science, he counted the number of
distinct sounds, or phonemes, used in 504 languages from around the world and
charted them on a map.
The number of sounds varies hugely from language to language. English,
for instance has around 46 sounds, some languages in South America have fewer
than 15, while the San bushmen of South Africa
Dr Atkinson found that the number of distinct sounds in a language tends
to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa .
He argues that these differences reflect the patterns of migration of
our ancestors when they left Africa 70,000
years ago. (Cro-Magnon man, our most recent ancestor, appeared about 35,000 to 30,000
years ago)
Languages change as they are handed down from generation to generation.
In a large population, languages are likely to be relatively stable -
simply because there are more people to remember what previous generations did,
he says.
But in a smaller population - such as a splinter group that sets off to
find a new home elsewhere - there are more chances that languages will change
quickly and that sounds will be lost from generation to generation.