Landscape Shifts: The Driving Force Behind Early Human Speech Development
Originally Published 2 years ago — by ABC News
A new study suggests that the transformation of the landscape from dense forests to open plains during the Miocene era may have prompted early hominids to develop speech and language. Researchers found that as hominids transitioned from living in trees to moving onto the ground, they switched from vowel-based calls to consonant-based calls. By studying orangutan calls in a savanna-like landscape, scientists discovered that consonants traveled farther than vowels, indicating that the development of consonant-based calls allowed hominids to communicate over greater distances. This early expansion of speech was a pivotal turning point in language development for humans, leading to the emergence of a rich spoken language in Homo sapiens.
