Language and human evolution

Abstract

In order to appraise the linguistic ability of fossil hominids, author have focused on some of the morphological evidence. During the course of this research she discovered that the literature available on the topic of "Language and Human Evolution" is vast; many books and dissertations have been written on the subject. In fact, Mellars (1996:387) writes, "it is tempting to suggest that there are almost as many views of the possible origins of language as there are linguists, psychologists and paleoanthropologists who have written on the issue." It was impossible to exhaustively deal with all of the various evidence and theories in such a brief paper. Author's goal was to focus on evidence for language capacity from the vocal tract, brain, and hypoglossal canal, and then to discuss this morphological evidence in the genera Australopithecus and Homo.