Origins of human language reaches back 25 million years.

A crucial structure in the brain that serves in controlling language, found only in humans and apes, has now also been identified in monkeys, according to a new and controversial study. This would suggest that the origins of language appeared 25 million years earlier than previously thought.

The discovery is of great importance researchers have revealed. For neuroscientists, this is analogous to identifying a fossil that sheds light on our evolutionary history. However, unlike bones, brains did not fossilize. Instead, neuroscientists need to figure out what the brains of common ancestors may have been like by examining brain scans of living primates and comparing them to human brains, hoping to get answers along the way.

“It is like finding a new fossil of a long-lost ancestor. It is also exciting that there may be an older origin yet to be discovered still,” explained Professor Chris Petkov from the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University. Read the free article.