But for it to be a language I think that we should at least have some evidence supporting the hypothesis that there is a meaning being expressed. As I stated above: language needs semantics.
We do not need to understand something for being able to tell it is a language, for instance, we cannot decipher Linear A, but we are sure it writes a language.
Proto-language (or mother language) is a hypothetical ancestral language that is reconstructed by comparing similarities and differences of a group of related languages. For example, Proto-Indo-European is the proto-language of most of the languages spoken in Europe and Asia today, such as English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. A proto-language is not directly attested by any historical records, but it can be inferred by applying the comparative method.
It’s likely archaic human language began as simple communication, similar to that of other advanced social animals, then evolved gradually as humans adapted to various environmental and social changes over millennia. It was not a sudden change from proto-language to the complex language we have today, but rather a continuous spectrum of development.
However, research indicates that human language underwent a rapid transformation around 15,000 years ago (punctuated evolution). This probably occurred mainly in Europe, where humans faced intense selective pressure due to the harsh climate of the last ice age and the competition from other hominins, like Neanderthals. This was a period when human cognition and language made a significant leap forward, giving us an advantage over other animals. Other animals did not experience such drastic and rapid changes in their environment and social interactions as humans did in a short span of time.
This was a time when humans started living closer together and needed to cooperate with each other in order to survive. Selective pressure was intense. More advanced and specialized tools were needed, and cooperative hunting was necessary. Lone hunter-gatherers would find it difficult to survive under these conditions. A leap in cognition and language is what helped us survive and spread quickly throughout the world. It was a watershed moment in human evolution. It also opened the door for abstract thing, including artistic expression and spiritual awakening.
Although cetaceans are social animals and many engage in cooperative hunting (as do other creatures like lions, cheetahs, etc.), there is no evidence that they have developed complex language like humans did. Their communication may be limited to basic, proto-language, which is sufficient for their needs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It doesn’t mean that they are less intelligent or worthy of respect, but that they have evolved differently from us.
15,000 years ago, the Neanderthals were long gone (around 20,000 years earlier).
I agree with you; my post was responding to what was quoted, that understanding meaning is required.
Yes, modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted together in Europe (and western Asia) for several thousand years, ~40,000+ years ago. I believe this is just one factor that began the great leap in human cognition that occurred later.
I doubt that. First, because European languages do not seem more complicated or complex (which is not the same thing!) than African, Asian or American languages. Second, because Proto-Indo-European seems to originate from bejond the Ural, as seen from Europe, where Neandertals were scarcer. Thirdly, because Proto-Indo-European is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE (late Neolithic - early Bronze Age), much too late for your hypothesis.
The changes other animals experienced were so big and drastic that many went extinct, including all megafauna in Europe, Asia and America.
Hunter-gatherers need not be in small groups or lonely. And they can switch cyclically from hunter-gatherer to sedentary in quick succession, for instance from one season (summer) to another (winter). Their language, if anything, seems to be more complex than our modern language.
In general it seems that ancient languages in Europe (Proto-Indo-European all the way to Greek and Latin) were more complex in the past, had more cases, more genders, more declinations, more exceptions to the more numerous rules. According to your theory that would imply that we are under less selective pressure than them, and have less
abstract thing, including artistic expression and spiritual awakening
I doubt that is correct.
My thesis:
.1. Human language is much older than 50,000 years. Proof? Humans first migrated to Australia 65,000 years ago and formed as many as 500 language-based groups. This refutes your Euro-centric-language-development thesis too.
.2. Neandertals had language too.
.3. The greatest leaps in human cognition (not knowledge: cognition) ocurred long before the ~40,000+ years you postulate. Just think of it this way: if your thesis was right the Aboriginal Australian, having separated from the rest of humanity before that great intellectual leap, would be biologically less advanced than the rest of us. The same could be argued for Africans. They might be tempted to call you a racist if you don’t thread carefully.
There’s strong evidence that modern humans evolved in Africa, and that they migrated out of there at different times in response to climate changes. The ice age affected not only central Europe, but also other regions, including Africa. One of the most dramatic effects was the transformation of the Sahara desert, which alternated between humid and arid periods.
The Sahara acted as a sort of a pump for human dispersal. It sucked humans in when it was green and wet, and created conditions that stimulated cognitive development before the great diaspora. When the Sahara became dry and barren, it pushed these more advanced humans outward, both north, east and south (back to sub-Saharan Africa, where they continued to evolve). This scenario is consistent with the “out of Africa” hypothesis, which proposes that all modern non-African populations are substantially descended from populations of Homo sapiens that left Africa after 70,000 years ago.
Surviving on African savannas was challenging and required more intelligence than living in trees in the forest. We evolved from opportunistic hunter-gatherers, into highly specialized hunter-gatherers, with more cognitive ability and more advanced language.
I believe that the modern human mind was primed and enhanced in Africa (>100,000 years ago) before the great diaspora. It had the potential to cope with a wide variety of environmental and social changes.
One environment that was particularly harsh was late ice-age central Europe, where humans faced brutal living conditions, as well as intense competition from other hominins. I believe this was another great leap in human cognition (putting us well ahead of whales in the big-brain department 
), but it wasn’t an isolated effect. Big environmental changes also occurred elsewhere (including Africa and Australia), and humans were now equipped cognitively to adapt to them—which they did (IOW, no sub-species is smarter than another). Too successfully, if you ask me. Out biosphere would be better without so many of us.
The logical conclusion would be that humans had developed language >100,000 years ago, it seems to me. Including Neandertals, who also must have lastly come from Africa, with some species in between (Homo heidelbergiensis). Thus H. heidelbergiensis must have been able to speak too.
I fully agree on that.
I agree we had language >100,000 yo, I just believe it was very basic language, not unlike other advanced social animals, like whales [probably] have. I believe it was the living in much larger/closer groups, the need for more specialized hunting tactics and tools, and occupying vastly different environments in a short period of time that developed our high cognition (capable of abstract thinking), and complex language that we have today. I believe that occurred ~15,000 yo.
So, all of the widely-separated human groups all went from whale-like proto-language to fully-developed modern-human language independently, at about the same time? I find that implausible.
Complex communication necessitates sophisticated language, so I have to echo Tapioca_Dextrin’s line of thought.
I’m saying before 100,000 yo, humans were whales.
No, I’m not saying that either 
. I’m saying humans had the potential for higher thought and more complex language before they spread from Africa, but it wasn’t realized until they had a need. Living in varying, difficult environments, in closer quarters created that need (sub-Sahara, central Europe, western Asia, SE Asia, Siberia, and all continents except Antarctica all presented unique challenges and needs). If a group of humans left the Sahara and moved into a pristine utopia, with no challenges, I don’t believe they would have developed higher thought and complex language.
Check out PastTense’s article. Whale vocabulary is apparently larger than that characterized by Tapioca_Dextrin in 2001.
The article directly addresses the OP: scientific views of the complexity and potential information content of animal communication can vary a lot over time. So I say if whales had language, it wouldn’t necessarily be immediately obvious. To take another example, we only figured out that elephants communicate subsonically over the past 30 years or so: the anatomical work was carried out in 2012.
Also, RickJay noted that the Hawaiian language has a limited number of sounds: wiki says it has 8 consonants and a debatable number of vowels. Hawaiian phonology - Wikipedia
And I reply that this is not how evolution works. Things are not selected for before there is a need for them. Nature is parsimonious.
And then you claim the potential was there, all over the world, and was suddenly and simultaneously needed in places that “all presented unique challenges and needs”? Sorry, that strains credulity.
So, you’re saying that when a giraffe needs a longer neck, he doesn’t just grow one? That’s not very Larmarckian of you.
Of course I don’t believe that. Natural selection is the process by which organisms with certain traits have a higher chance of surviving and reproducing than others in a given environment. Selective pressure is a big part of it.
In human evolution, selective pressure played a significant role in shaping our physical and cognitive traits. The emergence of high cognition and language in humans was driven by the challenges of living in the African savanna, where environmental and social complexity required advanced problem-solving and communication skills. Later, as humans migrated out of Africa and encountered different climates and cultures, they faced new selective pressures that favored more diverse and sophisticated cognitive and linguistic abilities.
I am not only saying that, I am also saying that giraffes don’t grow longer necks before they need them, just in case they might come in handy some day. Long necks are much too expensive for that. Same for the potential to speak complex languages: it would be wasteful to have that potential hability for more than 100,000 years while spreading across the world and then suddenly, ~15,000 years ago, to develop complex language all over the world, from Oceania to the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Plus, the humans who stayed in Africa also developed language and higher thought. If conditions in Africa were right for the development of language and higher thought, why didn’t the pre-diaspora humans develop it?
I agree that pre-diaspora humans in Africa had language. And those that remained in Africa faced continued selective pressure and continued to evolve. They too may have evolved complex language early on. But, my understanding is that ice-age central Europe, with its higher than normal pressures probably developed it first. Not only, just first. If true, it doesn’t matter in the large scheme of things, simply a watershed moment in human pre-history.
I wonder how you arrived at this number. From the Last Glacial Period in wikipedia:
The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known colloquially as the Last Ice Age or simply Ice Age, occurred from the end of the Eemian to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago.
Why choose the end of that period and not the moment when it started 115,500 years ago, which I still think is too close to today, but almost an order of magnitude earlier than your ~15,000 claim.
And before that there was the Saale Glaciation, starting 300,000 or 400,000 years ago, ending 130,000 years ago, which seems more fitting to me (no proof, but the time of the Neandertals is right there, and I claimed they had complex language, so…).
And before that there was the Elster Glaciation, 500,000 - 300,000 years ago (some overlapping there, the boundaries are fuzzy and not uncontroversial). Why not choose a starting point for language there? Seems actually even better than the Saale Glaciation to me.
Checking sources, I see that my 15,000 figure is too late. Complex language (compositional, referential, symbolic, as opposed to animal communication, which is repetitive, instrumental, and hard-wired) emerged earlier (pre-50,000 yo). But by ~20,000 yo (after the height of the late ice age), human social relations had been completely restructured. More importance was placed on individual and collective identity, as well as kin relationships and even the supernatural. Regional differences could be discerned for the first time. Certainly, complex language had emerged by then, but did it emerge long before that? I don’t believe we have evidence one way or the other, but I don’t think it did, since it wasn’t needed.