While it's still very unclear just when exactly language evolved in humans, it would seem our ears, at least, were preparing for it for a very long time. The finding is interesting, but definitely seems to have a chicken-or-egg problem in my opinion. Do our ears have a unique sensitivity to maximize our ability to understand language, or are human speech sounds concentrated in that range because that's where our ears are maximally sensitive?
Well, it makes me wonder if all primates developed this ability and then it was selected against in the other lines and we managed to keep it as it became useful?
Posted by: Ron on July 14, 2008 08:15 AM