Name: 語言有多古老？SciShow 帶你搭乘時光機回到過去！ (How Old IS Language?)
Uploaded: 2025-08-16T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 14 min 43 s

基礎被動語態

This video is brought to you by language, literally.

這段視頻是由語言帶來的，真的。我現在就是用語言向大家傳遞信息。語言是我們人類最基本、最獨特的東西之一。

It's what I'm using right now to transmit information to you.

情態副詞

Language is one of the fundamental, uniquely human things about us.

但它是從哪裡來的呢？語言不會完全變成化石，所以要回答這個問題，我們必須像看待其他生物特徵一樣，來嘗試確定它是如何進化的。

So to answer that, we have to look at it like any other biological trait to try to determine how it evolved.

Here's just a few of the ways scientists have tried to talk it out.

以下是科學家們嘗試解決這個問題的幾種方法。

Figuring out when we developed language is really important for a lot of reasons.

出於很多原因，弄清我們是何時發展出語言的非常重要。

For starters, plenty of anthropologists and linguists think language was one of the key factors that allowed modern humans to develop complex societies and other behaviors that make us unique. It's a linchpin in social interaction, sharing information, formulating worldviews, and developing cultural ideas like myths. But like all big questions in research, this one has proved to be contentious.

首先，許多人類學家和語言學家認為，語言是現代人類得以發展複雜社會和其他行為的關鍵因素之一，而這些正是我們的獨特之處。它是社會交往、資訊共享、形成世界觀和發展神話等文化觀念的關鍵。但是，就像所有研究中的重大問題一樣，這個問題也被證明是有爭議的。

So much so that in the 1860s, the Linguistic Society of Paris forbade its members from discussing the origin of language at all. And a few years later, the equivalent British group followed suit. They may have been worried that these contentious discussions could lead to researchers exchanging more than just words. And while at least researchers are able to study it now, there's still a lot of debate. But if we're going to talk about when language evolved, first we have to define what language is. More specifically, we need to define what makes human language different from the ways that other animals communicate. Bees do dances to tell their co-workers where food is, prairie dogs have different alarm calls to warn of different predators, and a parrot named Alex reportedly had a vocabulary of over a hundred words that he was able to use to identify things and answer questions. But there's a lot more to a language than that. While there are differences of opinion over the best definition of a language, one of the features that mostly everyone thinks a language needs is recursion, or being able to embed one piece of grammar in another of the same type. For example, in the sentence,

以至於在 19 世紀 60 年代，巴黎語言學會禁止其成員討論語言的起源。幾年後，英國的相應組織也效仿了這一做法。他們可能擔心，這些有爭議的討論可能會導致研究人員交流的不僅僅是語言。雖然至少現在研究人員能夠對其進行研究，但仍有很多爭論。但是，如果我們要討論語言是什麼時候進化的，首先我們必須定義語言是什麼。更具體地說，我們需要定義人類語言與其他動物交流方式的不同之處。蜜蜂會跳舞來告訴同事食物在哪裡，草原犬會發出不同的警報聲來警告不同的捕食者，據報道，一隻名叫亞歷克斯的鸚鵡擁有超過 100 個單詞的詞彙量，它能

Becca told me that Russell baked cookies, the words Russell baked cookies could function as a whole sentence on their own. But by putting them inside another sentence, we have a new idea that we couldn't have had without that recursion. Being able to stack phrases like this allows us to create an essentially infinite number of sentences. We can do this, and understand people when they do it, because language has syntax, or rules, that determine how pieces and parts are put together for specific meanings. So language requires two skills, the cognitive ability to understand these recursions, and the physical ability to express them. Which brings us to the question of how we got those skills. There are two basic ideas, both of which have their supporters and detractors. The first is that language is so complex that it had to develop in teeny tiny increments over a super long period of time.

貝卡告訴我，"羅素烤餅乾 "這個詞本身可以作為一個完整的句子。但把它們放在另一個句子裡，我們就有了一個新的想法，而如果沒有遞歸，我們是不可能有這個想法的。能夠像這樣堆疊短語，讓我們基本上可以創造出無限多的句子。我們之所以能做到這一點，並能理解別人的做法，是因為語言有文法或規則，這些規則決定了如何將各個部分組合在一起，以表達特定的含義。是以，語言需要兩種技能，一種是理解這些遞歸的認知能力，另一種是表達這些遞歸的物理能力。這就引出了我們如何獲得這些技能的問題。有兩種基本觀點，各有支持者和反對者。第一種觀點認為

In this version, language and our cognitive skills co-evolved, with natural selection acting on a series of pre-language traits, eventually evolving into a fully-fledged language. That could have looked like having a small vocabulary of individual word sounds, then combining two words together to mean something new, then eventually developing syntax and recursion and language at the same time. Baby steps. The other idea is that the evolution of language happened a lot faster, and we basically went from no language to language all at once.

在這個版本中，語言和我們的認知能力是共同進化的，自然選擇作用於一系列前語言特徵，最終進化成完全成熟的語言。這可能看起來就像擁有一個由單個單詞發音組成的小詞彙量，然後將兩個單詞組合在一起表示新的意思，最後同時發展出句法、遞歸和語言。循序漸進。另一種觀點認為，語言的進化速度要快得多，我們基本上是一下子從沒有語言發展到有語言的。

In this scenario, natural selection would have worked with traits that had nothing to do with language. So maybe our brain size evolved because it favored toolmaking, and our inner ears evolved to be extra sensitive to the pitches most common in nature. And once we had evolved all of those physical and cognitive traits for other purposes, all it took were tiny tweaks to put all those together and make a language. And to figure out which of these hypotheses is correct, we have to turn to physical evidence to let us peek into evolutionary history.

在這種情況下，自然選擇會對與語言無關的特徵發揮作用。是以，我們大腦的大小可能是因為有利於製造工具而進化的，我們的內耳可能是因為對自然界中最常見的音調特別敏感而進化的。一旦我們進化出了所有這些用於其他目的的身體和認知特徵，只需微小的調整就能把所有這些組合在一起，形成語言。要想知道這些假說中哪一個是正確的，我們就必須求助於物理證據，讓我們窺探進化史。

Which is really squishy, because language itself doesn't leave much evidence behind.

這確實很不可靠，因為語言本身並不會留下太多證據。

Sure, there's writing, and the oldest example of that is Mesopotamian cuneiform, which is about 5,000 years old. But we're pretty sure that language has to be older than writing itself, and probably by a long shot. Because many of the things that humans have done just wouldn't be possible without a way to communicate big ideas. Like, how do you tell another person how to build a structure without words? So we have to look for indirect evidence of language that predates the written word. Language isn't really possible without symbols and the cognitive ability to process them. A word can represent an object, but it's not the object itself. This kind of symbolic representation means that language lets us talk about things that aren't directly in front of us, plus abstract ideas or concepts like fear or love or extinction.

當然，有文字，最古老的文字是美索不達米亞的楔形文字，距今約有 5000 年的歷史。但我們可以肯定的是，語言的歷史一定比文字本身還要久遠，而且可能還要久遠得多。因為如果沒有交流思想的方式，人類所做的許多事情都不可能實現。比如，如果沒有文字，你如何告訴別人如何建造一座建築？所以我們必須尋找文字出現之前的間接語言證據。沒有符號和處理符號的認知能力，就不可能有語言。文字可以代表一個物體，但它不是物體本身。這種象徵性的表徵意味著語言可以讓我們談論並非直接擺在我們面前的事物，以及抽象的想法或概念，如恐懼、愛或滅亡。

And because these things aren't exact representations of concepts, there needs to be some way of ensuring that everybody knows what a specific symbol represents.

由於這些東西並不是概念的精確代表，是以需要有某種方法來確保每個人都知道某個特定符號代表什麼。

They would have had to talk about it. So if we look for evidence of symbolic thought, we can assume they also had language. Mesopotamian cuneiform developed out of a system of physical tokens, which were used by merchants to keep track of merchandise.

他們必須談論它。是以，如果我們尋找象徵性思維的證據，我們可以假設他們也有語言。美索不達米亞的楔形文字是由商人用來記錄商品的實物符號系統發展而來的。

Each different type of token corresponded to a specific item, like a jar of oil or a basket of grain. That's symbolic representation, so we can say that people had to have used language as long ago as the oldest of these tokens existed, which was 10,000 years ago. But that's where our ability to directly translate symbols pretty much ends. Before that, we have things that we believe are linked to symbolic thought, but we don't necessarily know what the symbols represent.

每種不同的代幣都對應著一種特定的物品，比如一罐油或一筐穀物。這就是符號表示法，是以我們可以說，早在最古老的這些符號存在的時候，也就是 1 萬年前，人們就已經使用語言了。但我們直接翻譯符號的能力幾乎到此為止。在此之前，我們有一些我們認為與符號思維有關的東西，但我們並不一定知道這些符號代表什麼。

There's plenty of examples of objects that had no literal utilitarian function, but we still find them in places where humans hung out.

有很多例子表明，有些物品並沒有實際的功用，但我們仍然能在人類活動的地方發現它們。

There are these geometric patterns at a site called Blombos Cave in South Africa, which are 75,000 years old. A similar decorative pattern is found over and over again at that site, suggesting that it meant something to the people etching it.

在南非一個名為布隆博斯洞穴的遺址中，就有這樣的幾何圖案，距今已有 7.5 萬年的歷史。在該遺址中，類似的裝飾圖案被反覆發現，這表明它對刻畫它的人來說意味著什麼。

And in Morocco, researchers have found shells with little holes drilled into them that are 82,000 years old. The holes suggest the shells were worn as beads, or ornamentation.

而在摩洛哥，研究人員發現了鑽有小孔的貝殼，這些貝殼已有 8.2 萬年的歷史。這些小孔表明，這些貝殼曾被當作珠子或裝飾品佩戴。

Unfortunately, those are pretty much the oldest physical artifacts of symbolic thought that researchers can agree on, and the evidence going further back just gets murkier.

不幸的是，這些幾乎是研究人員能夠達成共識的最古老的符號思想實物，而更久遠的證據則變得更加模糊不清。

Like, there's this pigment made from clay called ochre, which had functional uses, but could also have been used to color things for symbolic reasons.

比如，有一種用粘土製成的顏料叫赭石，它有功能性用途，但也可能出於象徵性原因被用來給東西上色。

Archeologists have found flakes of pigment in layers of dirt dating back as far as 400,000 years ago, but it's tough to say which things were colored for functional purposes, and which of them were symbolic. That's about as far as we can get with just looking at stuff.

考古學家在距今 40 萬年前的土層中發現了顏料片，但很難說哪些東西是為功能性目的而著色，哪些是象徵性的。我們只能通過觀察這些東西得出結論。

So now, let's turn to the evidence we get from language users, and talk about anatomy.

現在，讓我們來看看從語言使用者那裡獲得的證據，談談解剖學。

But before we get into that, we're going to use our language skills on a quick ad.

不過，在討論這個問題之前，我們要利用我們的語言技巧來做一個簡短的廣告。

This SciShow video is supported by Jump, a statistical analysis software designed to help you with all of your analytics needs.

本 SciShow 視頻由 Jump 支持，這是一款統計分析軟件，旨在幫助您滿足所有分析需求。

If you're working with a dataset that has what feels like way too many variables, you could use Jump's predictor screening to highlight the most meaningful variables, and avoid wasting your energy on the other ones.

如果你正在處理的數據集感覺變量太多，你可以使用 Jump 的預測篩選功能來突出最有意義的變量，避免在其他變量上浪費精力。

You can also untangle which of those variables have the biggest impact on your dataset using Jump's multivariate approaches.

您還可以使用 Jump 的多變量方法，找出對數據集影響最大的變量。

Principal Components Analysis and Partial Least Squares Regression sort out those questions for you.

主成分分析法和偏最小二乘法迴歸法可為您解決這些問題。

There's no need to struggle through data that you can't make heads or tails of.

沒有必要糾結於無法理解的數據。

And you can test it out with a 30-day free trial for anyone, anywhere, at jmp.com slash scishow.

您可以在 jmp.com slash scishow 上進行 30 天的免費試用，任何人、任何地方都可以試用。

Most of the languages in the world are spoken out loud, and speaking requires breath control, and that requires fine control of the muscles from a bunch of nerves.

世界上大多數語言都是大聲說出來的，而說話需要控制呼吸，這就需要通過一系列神經對肌肉進行精細控制。

Fossilized remains show that the duct that those nerves pass through is much larger in Homo sapiens and Neanderthals than it is in earlier species, suggesting that early humans and Neanderthals had greater control of their lungs and were better equipped to produce speech.

遺骸化石顯示，智人和尼安德特人的這些神經所通過的管道比早期物種的管道大得多，這表明早期人類和尼安德特人對肺部的控制能力更強，更有能力發出聲音。

The vocal tract is also critical for speech.

The human vocal tract includes our voice box that's about halfway down the throat, the sinuses and palate, and our round tongue.

人類的聲道包括位於喉嚨中段的聲帶、鼻竇、上顎和圓舌。

And the location of that voice box raises some evolutionary questions, because while it's good for speech, it's also bad if you don't want to die from choking.

音箱的位置引發了一些進化問題，因為雖然它有利於說話，但如果你不想被噎死，它也是個壞東西。

Being able to produce sounds isn't enough, though.

不過，僅僅能發出聲音還不夠。

You also need others to be able to hear those sounds.

您還需要其他人能夠聽到這些聲音。

So some archaeologists have looked at the bones of the inner ear that let us hear.

是以，一些考古學家研究了讓我們聽到聲音的內耳骨骼。

These bones are tiny, so they can be hard to recover.

這些骨頭很小，是以很難復原。

But fortunately, newer discoveries of well-preserved ear bones give us a peek at how they've changed through time.

但幸運的是，最新發現的保存完好的耳骨讓我們看到了耳骨在時間長河中的變化。

Modern humans have ear bones that are especially sensitive to the frequency range of human speech, which suggests that they were adapted to listening to others talk.

現代人的耳骨對人類說話的頻率範圍特別敏感，這表明他們已經適應了傾聽他人說話。

But there's also evidence that Neanderthals had those same changes to the throat and ears, which has two tantalizing explanations.

但也有證據表明，尼安德特人的喉嚨和耳朵也發生了同樣的變化，這有兩種誘人的解釋。

Either Neanderthals independently evolved the ability to chit-chat with their neighbors, or that our ancestors were ready to talk and listen before our two lineages split apart, which was over 400,000 years ago.

要麼是尼安德特人獨立進化出了與鄰居閒聊的能力，要麼是我們的祖先在 40 多萬年前我們的兩個血統分裂之前就已經做好了傾聽和交談的準備。

So physically, most of the requirements for speech production were in place by that time.

是以，從物理上講，當時已經具備了語音製作的大部分要求。

That's all on the production part of language, or at least speech.

這都是語言的生產部分，至少是語音部分。

But you don't necessarily need speech for language.

Gestures and sign languages are just as linguistically complex as spoken ones, and would have required a lot of brainpower to use.

手勢和手語在語言上與口語一樣複雜，需要大量的腦力才能使用。

Which means that the evidence for ear and throat changes might not be able to tell us the furthest possible origin date for language.

這意味著，耳朵和喉嚨變化的證據可能無法告訴我們語言最遠的起源時間。

But what we can look at is brains, or the closest thing to them that we get in the fossil record.

但我們可以研究的是大腦，或者說是化石記錄中最接近大腦的東西。

Endocasts are fossilized impressions of the inside of the skull, which let researchers study the shape of various regions of a brain, even when that brain has long since decayed away.

內鑄模是頭骨內部的化石印模，研究人員通過它可以研究大腦各個區域的形狀，即使大腦早已腐爛。

They're not perfect, since they can't really tell us how specific neurons connected with each other or sent signals, or what the structures on the inside of the brain looked like.

它們並不完美，因為它們無法真正告訴我們具體的神經元是如何相互連接或發送信號的，也無法告訴我們大腦內部的結構是什麼樣的。

Some researchers have considered brain volume when looking for signs of language capacity.

一些研究人員在尋找語言能力的跡象時考慮了腦容量。

If we assume there's some minimum size threshold for language, we have to assume that we meet it.

如果我們假定語言有一定的最小規模門檻，我們就必須假定我們達到了這個門檻。

So if a species had brains that were the same size as ours, we could say it was possible they used language, too.

是以，如果某個物種的大腦和我們的大腦一樣大，我們就可以說它們也有可能使用語言。

That keeps Neanderthals in the running, but it also means that an even older hominin, like Homo erectus, could have gossiped around the campfire as far back as 2 million years ago, even if they were using more of a gestured language to do so.

這使得尼安德特人繼續參選，但也意味著更古老的類人猿，如直立人，早在 200 萬年前就可能圍著篝火閒聊，即使他們更多使用的是手勢語。

First, brain volume doesn't totally correlate with intelligence.

首先，腦容量與智力並不完全相關。

And second, being really intelligent doesn't necessarily mean you have language.

其次，真正聰明的人並不一定有語言天賦。

So instead of looking at the whole brain, other research has focused on areas that we know are needed for language in modern humans.

是以，其他研究並沒有著眼於整個大腦，而是把重點放在了我們已知的現代人語言所需的區域上。

Fortunately, two of the most famous language areas in modern humans,

幸運的是，現代人類有兩個最著名的語言領域、

Wernicke's area and Braca's area, are right on the surface of the brain.

韋尼克區和布拉卡區位於大腦表面。

是以，我們可以在內臟鑄模上看到它們。

Looking at our extended family, regions that are physically similar to these two areas show up in great apes and baboons, which suggests that this particular feature was actually present before apes and old world monkeys split off from each other, somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 million years.

縱觀我們的大家族，在類人猿和狒狒身上出現了與這兩個區域物理上相似的區域，這表明在類人猿和舊世界猴子相互分離之前，這一特殊特徵就已經存在了，大約在 2 000 萬年到 3 000 萬年之間。

But those species don't have the ability to use their own languages, so obviously those other animals aren't using them for speech.

但這些物種並不具備使用自己語言的能力，所以顯然其他動物並沒有用它們來說話。

So it's likely that they evolved for other purposes, and then at some point got reassigned.

是以，它們很可能是為了其他目的而進化，然後在某個時候被重新分配。

In apes, these areas may be related to gesturing and vocalizations, forms of communication, but not language.

在猿類中，這些區域可能與手勢和發聲有關，它們是交流的形式，但不是語言。

So that's score one for the language was a byproduct of evolution of unrelated traits folks I mentioned earlier.

所以，語言是我前面提到的無關特徵進化的副產品，這就是語言的得分之一。

At this point, we've narrowed the development of language down to somewhere between 2 million years ago, when brains evolved to be at least as big as ours, and 82,000 years ago, when ornamental beads show up.

目前，我們已經將語言的發展範圍縮小到 200 萬年前（大腦進化到至少和我們一樣大）和 8.2 萬年前（裝飾珠出現）之間。

Which, it's not nothing, but it's such a big time span that it doesn't really tell us much.

這不是沒有，但時間跨度太大，並不能說明什麼。

Fortunately, there's another area to explore.

幸運的是，我們還可以探索另一個領域。

Researchers have identified a gene that appears to code for some aspects of vocal production and learning in a bunch of vertebrate species.

研究人員發現了一種基因，這種基因似乎是一些脊椎動物發聲和學習某些方面的代碼。

For instance, we have a mutation in a speech-related gene called FOXP2 that sets us apart from other living species.

例如，我們的一種名為 FOXP2 的語言相關基因發生了突變，這使我們有別於其他生物物種。

But this same mutation was also present in Neanderthals, meaning that it's at least 400,000 years old.

但尼安德特人中也出現了同樣的變異，這意味著它至少有 40 萬年的歷史。

But the mutation alone doesn't tell us anything about the cognitive aspects of language, since it's more about vocalizing than it is about grammar.

但是，單憑突變並不能說明語言認知方面的問題，因為語言更多的是發聲，而不是文法。

So instead of looking for relationships between genes and a specific behavior, in 2025, an international team of researchers decided to look at the genetic relationships between groups of early people.

是以，2025 年，一個國際研究小組決定研究早期人群之間的遺傳關係，而不是尋找基因與特定行為之間的關係。

And instead of using archaeological evidence to try to pinpoint when language developed, they used migration.

他們沒有利用考古證據來確定語言的發展時間，而是利用了遷移。

As I've mentioned, language is uniquely human.

正如我所提到的，語言是人類獨有的。

Which means, outside of some very specific circumstances with individuals who have cognitive or physical differences, language is something that all humans have an innate ability to use.

這意味著，除了在某些非常特殊的情況下，有認知或身體差異的個體之外，語言是所有人類與生俱來的能力。

Every single human community on Earth has a language, and some have multiple.

地球上的每一個人類社區都有一種語言，有些社區甚至有多種語言。

That's more than 7,000 languages, with complex rules for how words, sentences, and meanings are constructed.

這就意味著有 7000 多種語言，其單詞、句子和含義的構造規則十分複雜。

This suggests that language, or at least the capacity for it, developed back when Homo sapiens were living in close quarters, before we started migrating out of Africa.

這表明，早在智人開始遷徙出非洲之前，當智人還生活在近距離環境中時，語言，或者至少是語言能力就已經發展起來了。

All modern humans are descended from those different waves of migrants, so all the traits that we have in common across the whole species most likely existed before we left Africa.

所有現代人都是這些不同移民潮的後裔，是以我們整個物種的所有共同特徵很可能在我們離開非洲之前就已經存在了。

Researchers are pretty sure that the first group of people to separate from the rest of Homo sapiens were the ancestors of the Khoisan people found in southern Africa.

研究人員非常肯定，第一批從其他智人中分離出來的人就是在非洲南部發現的科伊桑人的祖先。

Genomic data allows us to estimate when they split from the rest of the population by looking at DNA and identifying the places where there are differences from other groups of people.

基因組數據使我們能夠通過 DNA 和識別與其他人群不同的地方來估計他們何時從其他人群中分離出來。

See, mutations in DNA happen at a pretty consistent rate, so by comparing how many have built up between two groups, scientists can estimate how long ago the group separated.

DNA突變的發生率相當一致，是以，通過比較兩個群體之間的突變數量，科學家們可以估計出該群體分離的時間。

And that let the researchers estimate that the separation happened roughly 135,000 years ago.

據此，研究人員估計，分離發生在大約 13.5 萬年前。

Now, this doesn't mean that language evolved 135,000 years ago.

現在，這並不意味著語言是在 13.5 萬年前進化而來的。

It means that the capacity for language was in place by then.

這意味著語言能力在那時已經具備。

We don't have a ton of evidence of symbolic behavior that suggests we were actually using language at that point, and we won't confidently see that for at least another 50,000 years.

我們並沒有大量的符號行為證據表明我們當時確實在使用語言，而且至少在 5 萬年後我們才有把握看到這一點。

So one possibility is that our ancestors evolved the physical structures for language back before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals split apart.

是以，一種可能性是，早在智人和尼安德特人分裂之前，我們的祖先就已經進化出了語言的物理結構。

Those cognitive skills continued to develop in the Homo sapiens lineage, and we had basically the full toolbox by the time some of us hit the road to the rest of the world.

這些認知技能在智人的血統中繼續發展，當我們中的一些人踏上通往世界其他地方的道路時，我們基本上已經擁有了完整的工具箱。

And then somewhere around 80,000 years ago, we put it all together, and boom, language and modern human behavior.

然後，大約在 8 萬年前，我們把這一切結合在一起，於是就有了語言和現代人類行為。

But that's just one idea of what might have happened.

但這只是對可能發生的情況的一種設想。