Evolving Communication

Alex Kilgore

If a meeting of two very intelligent individuals such as Jared Diamond and Bo Graslund was to occur than a truly fascinating discussion would surely result. The both presented some very interesting theories on the evolution of the modern human’s capacity for language.

            Graslund and Diamond both take the view that one of the human being’s defining characteristics and greatest achievement is our ability to for complex language. Both agree that complex modern human language developed well before the first records of written language existed. “…human language must have achieved its modern complexity long before that [earliest written language]” (Diamond, pg 154). It would have taken millions of years for language to develop into what it is today they both agree, and it would have taken hundreds of thousands of years for written language to develop from the complex language of modern humans. Graslund and Diamond also agree on the theory that modern monkeys such as vervets and apes have the mental capacity for spoken language. Vervets for example have the ability to communicate a predator specific danger through particular calls. It is simply an anatomical difference that prevents monkey and apes from being able to develop spoken language as precise as humans. Graslund touches on the ideas that perhaps early humans may have been only slightly more intelligent than the apes of today.

            Some areas that these two may disagree on are the actual intelligence levels of monkeys of today. Diamond seemed skeptical at most to the idea of specific predator cues of vervets for example. Graslund stood firm to the idea that the only thing preventing chimpanzees, for example, of speech is something physical. Though their spoken language would not be nearly complex as our 4 million years in development language, they would still be capable of rudimentary communication through speech, like early humans.