19 April 2011

Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born

No shit, Sherlock.

According to this article:

Language is at least 50,000 years old, the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, and some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old.


Bullshit. The most recent common ancestor of all languages existed 50,000 years ago, when, according to the Toba catastrophe theory, anatomically modern humans spread from Africa all over the world, taking their language with them.

(It is the recentness(?) (recency?) of this spread that accounts for the surprising genetic homogeneity of all Homo sapiens sapiens.)