The Revolutionary Origins of Language Chris Knight & Jerome Lewis Yale Univ. Press (2026)

The origins of writing and script remain unclear, but those of speech and language are simply unknown. This is because no physical evidence remains of the earliest language, which was probably spoken in Africa, the birthplace of Homo sapiens . By contrast, inscribed marks on clay tablets that constitute the earliest known form of writing — however mysterious — have survived from ancient Mesopotamia, dating to the fourth millennium bc .

Humanity spoke thousands of languages at the dawn of farming — now many of them are lost

That’s left a lot of room for scholars to speculate on how speech and language began, starting with thinkers from the ancient world, including Plato, who could not decide whether language had a natural or a purely human origin.…