The fossilised bones of our ancestors remain silent. So, how can we possibly imagine what our earliest languages sounded like ...

Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago. It is a deep ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

Researchers have found two important building blocks of human speech in wild chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives. A pair of studies finds that chimp communication includes both rhythmic ...

A new study suggests that the NOVA1 gene may have been a key player in the evolution of human language. By Carl Zimmer Scientists have long struggled to understand how human language evolved. Words ...

The mechanisms behind the development of human language are one of the great mysteries of primate evolution. Biologists have identified certain genes that play a role in human speech and are ...