How did communication evolve in humanbeings?

Question

How is it so many languages evolved over time?

Answer 1

There is disagreement over whether language is exclusive to humans or if other animals have language as well.  I, and many other animal trainers, belong to the supporters of the latter.  To me, the answer to your question is that human languages evolved in the same way they continue to evolve today, through invention or borrowing, adoption, re-definition, and extinction of words but that language use is shared with other animals and has been around for a very, very long time since brains evolved the complexity to use even minimal communication.  People who think that language is exclusive to humans tend to look at the development of symbolic thought and the ability to recall and interpret information distant in time or space.  They generally do not consider gestural communication to be a language (usually with the exception of Sign Languages) so they also look for patterns of language acquisition in infants as clues to the invention of language (unless they're Tower of Babel believers).

Answer 2

If you say something to one person and have the saying go around to ten people the saying will change.

Answer 3

Different people's were born on different continents and just developed their own ways of communicating.  If every race evolved in one region then all language would be the same.

Communication actually evolved due to the enlarging of the brain in the homo sapiens.

Answer 4

Well it's like this, the first humans just said uh! when they wanted something. And since to many people (all of which had their own idea of what uh means) they had to start clarifying what they meant by uh. And so have you ever played the telephone game at a party when you were young, where you said some thing into somebodys ear and they in turn whispered it into some one Else's ear and they into another ear and again and again all the way around the room like that until it got back to you? Then the message you got back was completely different than the original message.

So they had to incorporate different sounds to mean different things. And over a very long period of time of trial and error, and a lot of hard work, these people did it. they formed a word, and it was ouch! It was from a man who hit his head on a tree branch. It just came out. It was a special moment. And the rest is history.

seeya4now:)

Answer 5

I read a book, Becoming Human, by Dr. Ian Tattersol and I was shocked when he theorized that human speech evolved around 50,000 years ago after the appearance of symbollic artifacts.  I thought that was the stupidest theory from a very smart person that I ever heard.  Since then, they have discovered a well developed hyoid bone in a Neanderthal.  Since Neanderthals split with humans 400,000 years ago, that suggests that language was around at least that long ago.  Based on the brain of Homo erectus, it appears that it might of evolved speach a million or more years ago but based on thin openings for its spinal column, it did not have good lung control required for our speach.  So I think language evolved from apes that made specific sounds to warn of specific dangers.  These warning sounds evolved into more specific things.  Languages change over a relatively short period of time.  Words like Cool Man, or Funky, or a million others become popular.  People start saying things differently.  The world is a large place and different groups are separated from others and were much more separated until very recent times.