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Comment by jbotz | Hacker News Reader

Almost certainly our linguistic abilities (and through them, planning skills) are vastly greater than those of all other animals, but that is a matter of degree, not of category. The one thing in which we are categorically different from all other animals is that we learned to control and make fire... and quite possibly the linguistic abilities followed from that rather than the other way around[0]. Until the 20th century basically all of the advantages that technology bestowed upon our species directly flowed from our use of fire. Maybe our species should have been called "homo ignis"; the fire ape.

Obviously the cetaceans will never have that benefit, even if by some other objective measures they turned out to be as intelligent as humans.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catching_Fire:_How_Cooking_Mad...

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Other animals use fire, while we continue to seem unique in creating it. Fire hawks take burning sticks and alight brush to flush prey.

https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...

There was an episode (season 1, ep. 4) of Prehistoric Planet[0], where a raptor does that. I guess they got the idea from the firehawk (Lilith, is that you?).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Planet

Humans had completely mastered fire by about 200,000 years ago - after 800,000 years of experimentation.

Speech is dated to around 60,000 years ago, though some say we started down that path 200,000 years ago: right when we mastered fire.

Probably due to the need for profanity after getting burnt.

I can't in good conscience upvote short form jokes on HN, but that got a laugh out of me.

The need for profanity came much earlier - due to smashed thumbs, gouged fingers, etc. while learning to make primitive stone tools.

How can we date the origin of speech?

You can't really know for sure, but the typical argument (c.f. Chomsky & Berwick) is there was an enormous explosion in "cultural" products then. Before then, we don't see figurative art, and after we see all sorts of crazy things.

That's a pretty thin reed. Chomsky does a fair bit of argument by assertion and displays of confidence. And he's committed to this idea that language emerged in one massive mutation and thus functional analyses of language are pointless. This is a weird stance for a scientist to take.

I don't understand why you are hostile to me explaining the idea. In any case, you can read their book to see the arguments they use (which are not just assertions, anti-chomskyans just ignore or strawman everything he says). For example, it's not a massive mutation, but specifically a very very small one: the theories called "minimalism" for a reason.

Probably not to you explaining the idea, but to Chomskys ideas that have not been panning out well lately.

Genetically is seems it's very unlikely there is a single gene spot that explains human language but a confluence of different factors feeding back into one another in linage we do not have genetic access to at this time. We've done a bit of gene testing around this now, and single gene flips aren't near enough. I think the best analogy would be like playing a video game where you have to flip a number of switched to the correct position to get the system to work together.

Again, I don't think you understand the substance of the claim. Have you read the book? Mutations don't need to be single gene flips and I don't understand why you think Chomsky thinks that. He compares it to the evolution of the first photorecepetive cell, e.g. a qualitative jump, but that the mechanism is likely quite simple in order for that qualitative jump to be possible.

People really do flagrantly misrepresent his claims.

Genetic drift between humans and the next closest species to us in the brain an gene areas that seem to affect speech. That includes neanderthal and other hominoid species that are now extinct.

How does it make sense to say that speech developed 60 kya when Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam are commonly dated 200+ kya? Not to mention the recent advances within the past few years that more or less prove Neanderthals and Denisovans spoke as well. With that information Homo heidelbergensis almost certainly spoke as well and if I could bet on it, I would advocate that the smart money would be on Homo Erectus having some level of speech too. In fact a recent paper argues that case: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13752-025-00521-8 It's unfortunately not on SciHub though so I can't attest to it.

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