Language and Evolution
How communication distinguishes us from other forms of life.
Humans think. Humans ask. Humans tell. What’s fundamental to our humane existence, is the ability to have a systematic method of communication.
Language is our way of communication. It is not only about speaking, but about every way we transmit information. It can be a symbolic language, a sign language, a morse code, or even a computer programming language. Its not just about Humans, but about life in general.
Communication is a Universal Trait
Animals
Animals communicate a lot. Ants and dogs may use Pheromones; birds, apes, frogs and dolphins may make sounds; some frogs may signal with colors; chimpanzees may pass facial gestures; while honeybees may offer a tactile method — but essentially, they are all communicating. They may communicate for asserting dominance, scaring off predators, calling others for help, raising an alarm and sometimes, for discussing how humans have been troubling them.( /s)
Plants
Plants communicate too — mainly for dealing with competition. Plants touching each other communicate the need to alter the growth strategy, through touch itself. They also release chemicals from their roots to ask neighboring plants to grow more aggressively in a crowded environment.
Microlevel communication
In fact, within your very own body, your body part are constantly communicating with electrochemical impulses — your eyes are sending visuals to your brain, and your brain is sending commands to your muscles. Even within your cells, mitochondria (yes, the power houses), golgi bodies, endoplasmic reticula, and the nucleus — are constantly talking by releasing molecules.
In fact, none of your cells could ever grow and develop — if your DNA didn't communicate and use the information stored in to give rise to the cells that make you.
What makes Human Communication different?
The bad news is, humans cannot use electrochemical, chemical, olfactory, and several other forms of communication that other organisms can. The good news — we invented LANGUAGE, a 100,000 years ago. What makes it different is its versatile, dynamic and extensive nature.
The Biological Downside
A big problem with humans is that they acquire their language through cultural transmission — they need to learn it. Animals on the other hand, are inborn with their skill of communication — and pretty much don’t need to learn anything.
This might not seem like a big issue — but it means that humans can be quite handicapped if they do not learn the words they need to talk.
Studies have demonstrated a person kept in complete isolation (with no opportunity to hear or use, and hence learn language) during the initial years after birth, might never be able to use language because he couldn't learn it when his brain was in the capacity to learn.
This shows the dependence of human language on memory — something which animals don’t need, to be able to communicate.
The Technical Advantage
The basic advantage with Human language is that it is very creative, precise, expressive, and of course, dynamic.
A Big Dictionary and a lot of Ambiguity (including sarcasm)
While animals communicate with arbitrary sounds, humans being do not, and instead combine several arbitrary sounds to weave longer messages — giving us a way bigger dictionary of messages than animals. We can therefore transmit an infinite number of distinct messages by arranging our words into different orders.
Moreover, we can have a lot of ambiguity with our words — the same thing can mean different things in different contexts — in contrast to animals which have a single meaning for each signal they transmit.
Dynamic, Changing and Self-Improving Language
Since animals use evolutionary features to communicate, they cannot really make up new messages or signals. Humans beings, who culturally transmit language (words) can easily (without physical evolution) enhance their language with newer words and meanings.
We can communicate Abstract Ideas
Animals essentially use communication mainly for survival — like defense — and hence rely on stimuli for the need to communicate. They are context-driven. On the other hand, humans can talk about abstract ideas, imaginative situations and remote issues — things which physically aren't happening around them.
But, why just us?
Why don’t other animals practice language the way, we do?
“Its just evolution.”
Humans have a lot many evolutionary advantages over other living forms — which are directly and indirectly responsible for the development of language.
Human language (like most animals) emerged as verbal communication. The concept of language was raised from sounds — which people made, so as to talk. The way we could create sounds, made the difference.
Other animals cannot speak, or use sounds, like us. All the technical advantages discussed above are just a result of evolution.
The Physical Advantage
Humans walk bipedally (on two limbs) — freeing up our diaphragm to allow more control over breathing. Our tongues and vocal cords are also not very usual, and can manipulate and distort sound much better than most animals. In fact, everything we use for speech — our jaw, larynx, voice box — everything is just structured differently.
And that’s why we can produce so many sounds, clearly.
Intelligence
Within our brain, the cerebrum is very closely attached to speech comprehension. Unlike us, this part of the brain is absent or less developed in other animal forms. At the same time, humans are found to have the largest body-to-brain ratio (by size) — which implies a higher order of intelligence.
Intelligence invariably has an effect on our actions and abilities — and that is what allows us to have a syntactically, logically and contextually better language.
Why did we have to evolve this way?
Language has been an outcome of evolutionary needs. But what needs?
Survival and Growth
The need to survive has been the driving force behind evolution through natural selection. Even now, almost everything we do is in some way connected to our survival. The basic aim of science, technology, economic and social development is a better life — enhanced probability of survival on this planet, and the universe. Detailed analysis on this deserves a separate story. But here’s what language does to it.
Social Organization
Humans are social beings, like many other animals.
Living together has a lot many benefits — the biggest being security. However, it demands one crucial thing, and thats communication.
Certainly enough, language has allowed better communication — allowing us over the ages to organize ourselves into tribes, societies and civilizations. Moreover, it has even enabled intermingling of different groups.
By keeping the human race together, language has therefore played a major role in making us acquire dominance over the planet.
Better Planning
Structured and detailed communication enable better and quick, planning and coordination.
This is a trait that we have needed since the time humans were Hunter-Gatherers. Better planning meant a better catch — and that means a great feast!
Language has thus played a big role in allowing us to structure our thoughts and convey them — better than any other animal — giving us the edge we needed to survive in the prehistoric wilderness.
Development
Finally, language has allowed us to store our thoughts.
You cannot just preserve thoughts and retrieve them later, using arbitrary sounds. Structured language however can be noted down — written as symbols or in fact, characters as we know them today.
This ability to preserve our thoughts and words over the years has resulted in accumulation of ideas and technology.
Animals lose everything they learn in their lives, when they die. Humans however, preserve their experiences and knowledge for generations to come.
This allows new generations to carry on with what the earlier generation did, and this has resulted in the exponential outburst in science and technology in the last few centuries. People have been writing books and creating drawings on varied topics since millennia and we are carrying on the trend by creating blogs, videos, movies, photographs, newspapers, magazines — the list is endless today.
And that is how important Language is, for the entire humankind. Without it, we would have still been living in caves — or probably, we wouldn't have existed.
To know more about Human Language in particular, I would suggest reading this great story by Amritraj Dash.
This story was published in Technifity — A Growing Publication with a difference! Follow Technifity today and stay updated about everything happening — that matters to our times.
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