Caveman Talk

Those ads may have more truth to them than anybody thought. In a fine argument several paleoanthropologists suggest that some form of speech in early humans may have developed half a million years ago — in contrast to conventional wisdom which has speech emerging suddenly only about fifty thousand years ago, more or less contemporaneously with the development of modern man. The more ancient date intuitively makes more sense if one is willing to ascribe communication skills to other animals, leaving, indeed, quite lengthy evolutionary branches.