When did human language emerge? Genomic evidence may have an answer

Amazing stuff! So Homo sapiens was speechless (or in linguistic  incapacity) for about the first 100,000 years? Hard to stomach! 😀

This research seems to be a bit to speculative for my taste! I guess the crucial term here is "linguistic capacity".

"A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.

Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years old. Estimates of when language originated vary widely, based on different forms of evidence, from fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new analysis took a different approach. ...

“Every population branching across the globe has human language, and all languages are related.” Based on what the genomics data indicate about the geographic divergence of early human populations, he adds, “I think we can say with a fair amount of certainty that the first split occurred about 135,000 years ago, so human language capacity must have been present by then, or before.” ..."

From the abstract:

"Recent genome-level studies on the divergence of early Homo sapiens, based on single nucleotide polymorphisms, suggest that the initial population division within H. sapiens from the original stem occurred approximately 135 thousand years ago.

Given that this and all subsequent divisions led to populations with full linguistic capacity, it is reasonable to assume that the potential for language must have been present at the latest by around 135 thousand years ago, before the first division occurred. Had linguistic capacity developed later, we would expect to find some modern human populations without language, or with some fundamentally different mode of communication. Neither is the case. While current evidence does not tell us exactly when language itself appeared, the genomic studies do allow a fairly accurate estimate of the time by which linguistic capacity must have been present in the modern human lineage. Based on the lower boundary of 135 thousand years ago for language, we propose that language may have triggered the widespread appearance of modern human behavior approximately 100 thousand years ago."

When did human language emerge? | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "A new analysis suggests our language capacity existed at least 135,000 years ago, with language used widely perhaps 35,000 years after that."

Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago

Table 1. Summary of estimates of divergence times for Khoisan lineage.