Re: New analysis suggests our language capacity existed at least 135,000 kya

Aidan Kehoe wrote:

   Ar an triochadú lá de mí Meitheamh, scríobh Tilde:
   > I have just finished "Life and Adventures of William Buckley", an English
  > convict sent to Australia in 1802. He escaped in 1803 and spent 30 years
  > living with the Aborigines. And then come across this article and paper. It
  > occurs to me that language was present when they arrived in Australia.
  > That's 50 to 65 kya according to estimates I've seen. That strikes me as a
  > reliable minimum
 Why was he (or why are you) certain that language was present when they arrived
in Australia? I think it probably was but I don’t know that we can assert that.

Buckley learned the language of the group he ended up with and
its clear from the narrative that other groups there had
language as well. It's seems even more fantastic that they
entered Australia and then on their own developed hundred of
languages.

https://news.mit.edu/2025/when-did-human-language-emerge-0314

  >
  > It is a deep question, from deep in our history: When did human language as
  > we know it emerge? 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. They reasoned that since all human languages likely have
  > a common origin — as the researchers strongly think
 There’s no strong reason to think this. Cf that sign languages do not have
a common origin and that writing systems do not have a common origin (e.g. the
Cherokee syllabary, developed without knowledge of the details of European
writing systems but with the knowledge of their function.)

Sign languages are associated with the spoken language of
the culture/area they occur in.