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Comment by zirgs | Hacker News Reader

What makes them think that there was just one proto-language not several ones that appeared independently from each other?

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This is a very good question. It seems quite possible that some human population at some point, may have endured a level of stress and adverse conditions, that proper language transfer to the children did not happen -- something like a mix of surviving adults from different cultures who do not speak the same language.

There are apparent examples of languages being invented, with no clear parent language. [1] When education for the deaf is first introduced, children from many different families are brought together. Most do not have full language - they cannot communicate with language with anyone. Some are part of small clusters, families or small villages where many are deaf. [2] They often do have full languages. These languages are usually untraceable in origin. They're not related to each other, usually.

Pool these kids these together in a school and they will create a full language, a creole [3], in just a few years.

It's unclear, IMO, exactly how to interpret that effect. The children are not completely without language. They're obviously aware of the concept of language, a few of them may even have full languages (even if they can't use it with the other kids) and the teachers are also trying to teach them language, usually American sign if there's nothing local. So it can't be said to be language popping up in a true vacuum. But it is certainly curious.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard_Sign_Langu...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language

The short answer is "because it seems too difficult to have been independently developed." Of course, it was once thought that things like writing or farming were too difficult to have been independently developed, but archaeological evidence has made clear at least 3 (and possibly ~6-ish) independent inventions of the former and at least 9 for the latter.

There are a few more concrete reasons to specifically believe against independent development of language. If you believe that language faculties arise very quickly after evolution of a biological organ to facilitate language, that suggests that the ability to have language is a key part of Homo sapiens and therefore language would have originated only once in the development in Homo sapiens as a species.

There’s no evidence that Homo Sapiens, aside from some interbreeding with other hominids interacted with other hominids who were capable of complex language for that to be possible. And a multiple origin scenario for behaviourally modern humans flies in the face of modern science, archaeology, and palaeontology to such a degree that it would basically require magic.

That doesn’t seem to make sense. Surely interbreeding with other hominids requires interaction with other hominids?

History shows that many humans of the same species can “interact” without friendly communication, or, for that matter, preserving fully functional languages (Just look at the Minoans, Etruscans, Harappans, Rhetics, and the numerous other peoples who spoke something that we can’t read, or can understand but only with great effort)

How so? Early humans moved around and were all over the place, often with no or little contact. I don't see why two groups of humans couldn't have developed (proto)-language independently. There's lots of examples of things independently developing in multiple places.

I think what zirgs meant is that since at least one group of humans developed a language, it makes sense that different groups of humans could also independently develop language.

One (admittedly speculative) reason to believe that all natural spoken languages have a common ancestor derives from the fact that modern humans seem to rapidly develop new languages in the absence of an existing language, as was seen in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language. There is no particularly compelling reason to believe that earlier homo sapiens – who were otherwise anatomically modern – would be any different before they began migrating out of africa. This is especially true given that all human populations do ultimately have both an apparently-innate capacity for language, and their own languages.

If this is the case, then the first language would have probably rapidly spread between the early populations in africa – if, indeed, there were multiple distinct populations at the time – and new (homo sapiens–originated) languages would have only arisen if the chain of speakers were somehow broken and children raised without access to an existing language.

With that being said, there are some cases where something similar has happened. Most obviously are sign languages, which are believed to have had multiple origins, since it is possible for deaf people to be born among non-signing populations. Something similar in the case of spoken languages is the phenomenon of pidgins evolving into creoles mentions elsewhere in the comments, although they still retain at least some aspect of one of their parent languages. The extent to which the latter count as proto-languages is questionable.

I don’t think that we can conclusively say (or even close to that) that other Hominids were incapable of complex (to an extent) language.

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