Alissa Kong
Date Published: January 9, 2015
Summary:
In the past, we have always assumed that great apes, a very close ancestor of humans, seem to not be able to modify and learn new calls. This prompted us to question how humans evolved and developed the spoken language if our ancestors had trouble with developing new verbal skills.
A recent study done by Liverpool John Moores University and Pongo Foundation have discovered new calls from orangutans, a species which is part of the great apes, which show important similarities to the human spoken languages that may have been the origin of the many languages we speak today. Adriano Lameira led the study and explained that the new calls orangutans can learn are made from the quick opening-and-closing of the lips, which is very similar to the motions of our lips when we are talking. Furthermore, the one of the orangutan’s calls was very much like human consonants and another was like human vowels. This may have eventually led to what we call vowels and consonants today in our respective languages.
This study ultimately shows that our original thinking that great apes lack the capability to learn new calls was incorrect and that our languages today may have developed from the calls of our close ancestor, the great apes.
Relevance:
This article relates to the evolution unit that we are currently studying. In that unit, we learned about some of the ancestors of humans and how the species of today evolved, or changed from their ancestors. This particular article is about how humans evolved from the great apes and how we potentially could have taken the spoken calls from our close ancestors and changed them into our own various languages of today.
Did the orangutans only manage to make sounds of consonants and vowels, or were they able to speak some, simple words?
ReplyDeleteThe article did not specifically mention the orangutans speaking any words, so I think that they are still developing their speaking skills and have not been able to speak any words yet. But, the basis of words are consonants and vowels, so they have been able to speak the foundations of the human language.
DeleteDid the article give any insight about why we have evolved with more speaking abilities and why apes haven't?
ReplyDeleteThe article did not give any insight on why humans have evolved with more speaking abilities and apes haven't, but since humans have bigger brains compared to apes, that may be one of the reasons why we have evolved these speaking abilities and the apes have not.
DeleteHow long ago were humans only capable of speaking to the extent that the orangutans can now? Is it possible that the orangutans could develop the speech skills to speak some sorts of words if they are given the same amount of time?
ReplyDelete