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人类何时说话？新的遗传线索指向135，000年前
语言是我们物种中最大的力量乘数之一。它看起来比预期的要早。
来源:ZME科学When did the first humans start speaking? Did we always have this ability, inherited from our immediate ancestors? These questions sound impossible to answer — but not quite so.一项借鉴大量遗传数据的新研究表明，语言的能力至少在135，000年前就在当时的人类中存在。
与以前的尝试约会语言的起源不同，语言的起源依赖化石或文化伪像，这项研究采用了一种新颖的方法：当我们的祖先首先拥有语言所需的认知工具时，它利用早期人类种群的遗传差异来估计。
“The logic is very simple,” says Shigeru Miyagawa, a linguist at MIT and co-author of the study. “Every population branching across the globe has human language, and all languages are related.”
通过分析这些人群何时开始分裂，研究人员得出结论，语言的能力必须在135，000年前或大约135，000年前存在。
Population Splits and Their Relation to Language
To reach this conclusion, Miyagawa and his team reviewed 15 genetic studies published over the past 18 years. These studies included analyses of the Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA, and whole genomes.通过检查单核苷酸多态性（SNP） - DNA中的微小变化 - 它们将人类家谱中最早的分裂追溯到大约135，000年前。 This split gave rise to the Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa, who are among the most genetically distinct human populations alive today.
如果在最初的分歧之后人类中出现了语言能力，人们会希望找到没有语言的现代人口，或者具有某种沟通能力与所有其他人类人群的沟通能力有意义。也不是这种情况。 “So human language capacity must have been present by then, or before,” Miyagawa explains.
Homo sapiens