{"id":4288,"date":"2024-08-03T10:23:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T10:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.copernicusfestival.com\/what-came-first-words-or-gestures\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T16:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T16:23:19","slug":"what-came-first-words-or-gestures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/what-came-first-words-or-gestures\/","title":{"rendered":"What Came First: Words or Gestures?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

We still know embarrassingly little about the origin of perhaps the most important evolutionary product for our species – natural language.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Communication is a widespread phenomenon in the animal world, occurring across the entire \u201ctree of life\u201d \u2013 and it takes many forms. It can be expressed through gestures (e.g., in great apes), sequences of movements (like birds\u2019 courtship rituals), scents (pheromones released by insects), sounds (e.g., frogs croaking), changes in body coloration (as in cuttlefish), bioluminescence (light emission \u2013 as in fireflies or deep-sea fish), facial expressions (including eye gaze), and even vibrations traveling through water, soil, leaves, or spider webs. Naturally, many species use several modes and channels of communication, each with its own evolutionary story. <\/p>\n\n

In the broadest sense, we speak of communication when a message is sent from a sender to a receiver \u2013 though the sender doesn\u2019t always act intentionally or even know the receiver is present. Signals can be sent involuntarily, triggered by environmental stimuli or emotional states. Most animal communication seems to work like this. And it’s not too surprising, since the vast majority of animal signals are alarm calls (warnings about predators), mating calls (like birdsong), territorial threats (like the duets of gibbons), or signals about food sources (like the famous bee dance). Each of these messages has a specific environmental or emotional context. This type of communication isn\u2019t flexible \u2013 an animal can\u2019t send a message without the appropriate context \u2013 nor can it express arbitrary content. The advantage? It requires little cognitive effort \u2013 natural selection could hardwire it even into creatures we\u2019d hardly call intentional or conscious. <\/p>\n\n

The meanings of such messages are typically hardwired genetically, and animals don’t need to learn them (though some do \u2013 for example, impalas, zebras, and wildebeests have been shown to understand alarm calls not only from their own species but from the others as well).<\/p>\n\n

A Lack of Continuity?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Human natural language stands out against this backdrop: it\u2019s highly flexible, it allows us to convey virtually any content (even fictional or absurd), it\u2019s symbolic (we must learn the meanings of words \u2013 they\u2019re not inborn), and above all \u2013 we generally use it intentionally.<\/p>\n\n

With many human anatomical traits, practices, and behaviors, we can speak of evolutionary continuity. Take bipedal posture or tool use \u2013 once thought to define humanity; the fossil record shows how they evolved in our ancestors. Related species show similar traits (great apes can walk on two legs, though not for long distances; many monkeys use tools, like stones to crack nuts). But language seems trickier \u2013 for a long time, researchers believed no form of animal communication resembled human language enough to qualify as an evolutionary precursor. The fossil record is little help \u2013 since words and gestures don\u2019t fossilize, we\u2019re left with indirect clues, like social complexity or geographic spread of hominid species. <\/p>\n\n

Daniel Everett, for instance, argues that Homo erectus (who emerged about 2 million years ago and went extinct 100,000 years ago) must have used language \u2013 they built campsites with clear divisions of labor: areas for resting, meat processing, and plant processing. They also reached distant islands (like Crete), suggesting knowledge of seafaring. According to Everett, achieving all this without advanced language would\u2019ve been impossible. <\/p>\n\n

No Consensus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Back to great apes: psychologist Michael Tomasello believes they have a rich repertoire of vocalizations (e.g., when spotting predators, encountering threats, or finding food), but their use is not flexible. Apes vocalize more or less unconsciously. Hence, it’s hard to see these calls as the evolutionary roots of human words. Tomasello argues that gesture-based communication came first \u2013 something between pantomime and modern sign language \u2013 and this form paved the way for the development of brain circuits later adapted for processing speech, which he views as a cultural invention. In support of this, apes sometimes use gestures intentionally: to get someone\u2019s attention (e.g., by slapping the ground or throwing a stone) or to express intention (e.g., pulling another individual\u2019s arm in the direction they want to go). <\/p>\n\n

However, recent years have brought new discoveries in the realm of natural primate communication. Thanks to research in \u201cprimate linguistics\u201d \u2013 applying methods of traditional linguistics to primate vocalizations \u2013 we now know that primate vocal communication is more complex than previously thought. Playback experiments have shown that the meaning of vocalizations can be modified by syntax; each call can be broken into components (syllables), and changing their order affects the listener\u2019s response. <\/p>\n\n

We also know that apes possess a theory of mind \u2013 meaning they perceive others as intentional beings, worth communicating with deliberately. Overall, vocalizations seem to play a more central role in their lives than gestures. Therefore, more and more scholars today argue that we shouldn\u2019t look only to ape gestures for the roots of our own language \u2013 primate vocalizations must also be part of the story. <\/p>\n\n

Still, we must remember: we’re only just beginning the journey. Solving one of the great mysteries of science will require more discoveries \u2013 not only in animal communication, but also in paleoanthropology and neurobiology.<\/p>\n\n

\u0141ukasz Kwiatek<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Communication is a widespread phenomenon in the animal world, occurring across the entire \u201ctree of life\u201d \u2013 and it takes many forms. It can be expressed through gestures (e.g., in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bez-kategorii"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4289,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions\/4289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copernicusfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}