Social All people once spoke the same language?

[JSN]

I see everyone in this thread is dismissing it because of the bible, but let's tuck the knee jerk reaction of anti-religious sentiments away for a second.

Are y'all suggesting that the first 2 or more languages developed simultaneously? Wouldn't the first humans to develop speech at some point speak the same language?

In a reality-based scenario, languages with modern syntax would have evolved in parallel in different populations descending from very similar recent ancestors.

Which is totally possible, but given the facts that speciation probably requires a bottleneck, we see bottlenecks (including one so severe that every living human appears to have one common female ancestor (not to be confused with the first anatomically modern human female)) in DNA evidence, and the fact the language appears to be an inborn trait, I think it’s probably more likely that all modern human languages descend from a single ancestor language for the most part.

There have been some interesting cases of languages being spontaneously created. There was a group of deaf children who were put together in a care facility who quite naturally developed their own sign language with a large vocabulary and universal syntax.

 

[JSN]

Not necessarily. How far had we spread out before we developed speech?

https://summalinguae.com/language-culture/how-did-language-originate/

And here is an article about how long humans have been around, approximately:

https://humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution

So, obviously we can't prove any of this with 100% accuracy, but humans are 2~6 million years old as a species, and speech developed about 100k years ago.

Probably the reason why the language tree looks the way it does:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures

Seems more likely that languages developed i different areas at different times, and that would explain why they are so different, and the roots are different.

there are other scenarios though. For instance, there could have been an initial language all of the small population of the first humans spoke which branches, and then if isolated groups came together, there is a possibility of a new language being made from wholecloth rather than the two languages amalgamating into a pigeon.

It could also be that it’s just too hard to see how the conserved elements of languages is disparate is say mandarin and English fit together too.

It is likely that all modern languages evolved from a single ancestor language but that there were other languages extant before that ancestral language.

 

[Plutoburn]

Without doing any research I think by the time human evolved to have complicated forms of grunting and uttering, population is already dispersed enough to develop regional differences.

 

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Fallacy created by religion re: the tower of babel.

I think that was meant more as an allegory

 

[FadeLess]

its the same as asking if all religious have the same origin.

 

[ScarfaceJr]

yea

hell if you're into ancient history/languages/cultures you'll find similarities in words from various places around the world. For instance the ancient Maya/ancient Hindu/ancient Cambodia have striking similarities in building structure, deities, language, etc.

Nagas....

btw bible history =/= religion. Please stop intermixing the two. Religion is man made nonsense where you drink wink eat bread and pretend like its the skin and blood of a person (which is an act of cannibalism btw). The bible is a collection of history/genealogy/prophecy of a specific nation of people who's great ancestor made a contract with a great entity who gave them a list of do's and do not's.

 

[William Huggins]

We are not all of the same race, yes we do share a general gene pool but we have traces of other archaic human species, some of these species are thought to have developed speech, we also had the Pleistocene Epoch which lasted from 2.6 million years ago till about 11,700 years ago this ice age might have been pretty good at isolating development of different human races.

Having a common tongue isn't always a benefit when it comes to tribalism.

 

[Fedorgasm]

Everyone used to speak Esperanto before y'all were born.

It was created specifically to be the universal language. And proof that it worked lies in William shatner movies being filmed in entirely Esperanto.

 

[William Huggins]

Aren't people in this thread just talking about this little guy, not sure what the confusion is, all the talk of giant spaghetti monsters in the sky is making me hungry...............

 

[Bacco]

As animals quite possible, but tbh idk if animals of same race in different regions use different kind of grunts and growls... maybe some with complex communication do

After we evolved into "people"? Very unlikely unless the "first language" was invented before individual started to spread all around the world

 

[ElKarlo]

Think the LBK and other early agricultural peoples in Europe spoke the same language probably. When they came into contact again after branching off after leaving Greece they still spoke the same language iirc.
I wonder how far back the Bible and other books go back? Like the living memory which can go back centuries in illiterate societies. Wonder what stories and such they heard and what not before they slowly faded

 

[E Undead]

Is there a source on that info ?
Only few thousand is quite a few comparing it to the current numbers
, also Im not sure if we do know the number of people living on earth before that bottleneck scenario to compare properly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory

The toba theory itself is disputed, but the bottleneck itself isn't, or let's say the fact that at some point few individuals were around isn't. We were actually able to figure out that there was a very small genetic pool at some point by analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of humans all around the world. It's a fairly interesting topic.

According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals.[31][32] It is supported by some genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.

 

[HHJ]

Everyone spoke the Kings English.

"Ooga Booga,respecfully,Brother Unk...That boulder over there could be used to make right proper clubs,dont you think?"

 

[E Undead]

can you elaborate?

^ literally one post above dude

 

[AnGrYcRoW]

its the same as asking if all religious have the same origin.

But they do , our imaginations

 

[terrapin]

In a reality-based scenario, languages with modern syntax would have evolved in parallel in different populations descending from very similar recent ancestors.

Which is totally possible, but given the facts that speciation probably requires a bottleneck, we see bottlenecks (including one so severe that every living human appears to have one common female ancestor (not to be confused with the first anatomically modern human female)) in DNA evidence, and the fact the language appears to be an inborn trait, I think it’s probably more likely that all modern human languages descend from a single ancestor language for the most part.

There have been some interesting cases of languages being spontaneously created. There was a group of deaf children who were put together in a care facility who quite naturally developed their own sign language with a large vocabulary and universal syntax.

i had never heard this before. are you speaking from real knowledge here? as a christian (not a creationist and not anti evolution) i would find the fact that we may all come from a single human female pretty intriguing.

 

[E Undead]

i had never heard this before. are you speaking from real knowledge here? as a christian (not a creationist and not anti evolution) i would find the fact that we may all come from a single human female pretty intriguing.

There isn't that one first women we all originate from, that's a common misconception. Here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

"she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman"

 

[JSN]

i had never heard this before. are you speaking from real knowledge here? as a christian (not a creationist and not anti evolution) i would find the fact that we may all come from a single human female pretty intriguing.

Look up Mitochondrial Eve.

 

[JSN]

He somewhat phrased it wrong. There isn't that one first women we all originate from, that's a common misconception. Here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

"she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman"

How did I phrase it wrong? I specifically said not to be confused with the first anatomically modern female human.

 

[E Undead]

How did I phrase it wrong? I specifically said not to be confused with the first anatomically modern female human.

I already edited that out after I checked his quote again. You're right