Origins of Natural Language
There is disagreement among anthropologists on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man. However recent evidence suggests modern human language was invented or evolved in Africa prior to the dispersal of humans from Africa around 50,000 years ago. Since all people including the most isolated indigenous groups such as the Andamanese or the Tasmanian aboriginals possess language, then it was presumedly present in the ancestral populations in Africa before the human population split into various groups to inhabit the rest of the world.
Read more about this topic: Natural Language
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—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
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smiling carves dreams, bright cells
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“Which I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar:
Which the same I would rise to explain.”
—Bret Harte (1836–1902)