More on language. Recent research published by Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland suggests that modern languages may have a single point of origin in southern Africa.

Here is a report and brief discussion in the New York Times.

The thesis that modern language originated only once is an issue of considerable controversy among linguists. To put things very roughly the research uses methodology employed in biology to examine the diversity of sound types in different languages. As the distance from southern Africa grows, so the number of consonants, vowels and tones in a language decreases. Atkinson explain that this pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa.