When did humans develop Language?

When did humans develop language?

In my opinion, the reason humans started to speak, to develop language, was because we needed too, it was part of our evolution. It was due to the necessity humans felt to survive as easily and efficiently as possible, and language made that far more achievable.

 Sign was the first type to come onto the scene, hand gestures and movements to simply make our thoughts known, though a lot different to the Sign Language we know today, (used primarily for the deaf to communicate to others around them), it’s based on the same concept. Next came speech, which made things simpler yet more complex all at once, as it was easier to comprehend what people were saying rather than looking at their hands, but on the other hand, there was a whole new world of words and meanings to learn. The latest mode of Language is Writing, which once again evolved the way we communicate, news could spread around the world and inform millions, and it was a much faster and more efficient way to communicate to someone far away.

The first language to actually have a written form was the Mesopotamian writing system, and was originally drawn on big clay tokens. This all started in around 3500 B.C. Today we have technology that can literally decipher ancient languages, which all started 2 years ago, where MIT researchers developed computer software that could translate the extinct Semitic language of Ugaritic into modern-day Hebrew. The language has 30 letters, and the computer correctly found 29 of their Hebrew forms. About one-third of Ugaritic words have Hebrew root words, and the system correctly identified 60% of them. This was a big leap forward at the time, and means that now there are around 8 elusive languages we have yet to discover, not many considering all the languages out there.

There are many different languages in the world, some of which not even used any more, and some still being discovered and uncovered, others kept secret. Scientists around the world spend their days decoding these languages, finding new words and meanings, to further their knowledge of the world.

  
The oldest surviving language in the world is Tamil, still spoken by around 52 million people today. It dates back to around 500 B.C., and is spoken in some areas of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, the USA, UK and Australia.
 
Language is what makes us different from the animals, where they communicate for pure survival, we have gone past that, and it’s now used for socialising, leading, and informing, it keeps us entertained, it broadens our knowledge, and it will never stop evolving.

Websites Used:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/24988

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_old_is_the_Tamil_language

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tamil.htm

http://askville.amazon.com/writing-invented/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=2454687

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/writing.html

http://news.discovery.com/tech/computer-translates-ancient-language.html