In the physical adaptation view, one function (producing speech sounds) must have
been superimposed on existing anatomical features (teeth, lips) previously used for other
purposes (chewing, sucking). A similar development is believed to have taken place with
human hands and some believe that manual gestures may have been a precursor of
language. By about two million years ago, there is evidence that humans had developed
preferential right-handedness and had become capable of making stone tools. Wood
tools and composite tools eventually followed. Tool-making, or the outcome of manipulating
objects and changing them using both hands, is evidence of a brain at work.
The human brain is not only large relative to human body size, it is also lateralized,
that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. (More details are
presented in Chapter 12.) Those functions that control the motor movements involved in
complex vocalization (speaking) and object manipulation (making or using tools) are
very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. It may be that there was an
evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using abilities of humans
and that both were involved in the development of the speaking brain. Most of the other
speculative proposals concerning the origins of speech seem to be based on a picture of
humans producing single noises to indicate objects in their environment. This activity
may indeed have been a crucial stage in the development of language, but what it lacks is
any structural organization. All languages, including sign language, require the organizing
and combining of sounds or signs in specific arrangements. We seem to have
developed a part of our brain that specializes in making these arrangements.
If we think in terms of the most basic process involved in primitive tool-making, it is
not enough to be able to grasp one rock (make one sound); the human must also be able
The origins of language 5
to bring another rock (other sounds) into proper contact with the first in order to develop
a tool. In terms of language structure, the human may have first developed a naming
ability by producing a specific and consistent noise (e.g. bEEr) for a specific object. The
crucial additional step was to bring another specific noise (e.g. gOOd) into combination
with the first to build a complex message (bEEr gOOd). Several thousand years of
development later, humans have honed this message-building capacity to a point
where, on Saturdays, watching a football game, they can drink a sustaining beverage
and proclaim This beer is good. As far as we know, other primates are not doing this.