Richard Futrell, [associate] professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies language processing in humans and machines, explains why a certain level of neurological development is necessary for spoken language. “Speaking requires fine-grained motor control, and it has to be fast,” he says. … “There seems to be a special fast path for control of the vocal apparatus in humans that enables humans to produce more different sounds reliably,” Futrell says.

For the full story, please visit https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/when-did-humans-evolve-language.