Does “Full Humanity” Predate Homo Sapiens? (Part 3 - Language)
After taking a hiatus, I am back to the task of reviewing Glenn Morton’s evidence for humanity extending back 5.5 million years, which is when Morton believes Adam and Noah lived. In Does “Full Humanity” Predate Homo Sapiens? (Part 1 - Altars), I concluded that it was reasonable to consider Altars as evidence of humanity. Even Hugh Ross uses that as a criterion for dating the beginning of humanity, though he only goes back 24,000 years. Then, in Does “Full Humanity” Predate Homo Sapiens? (Part 2 - Neanderthals), I reviewed the evidence that neanderthal altars qualify them as human, and the DNA evidence that establishes common ancestry with Homo Sapiens. Such dating suggests that humanity goes back at least 600,000 years. In my journey back to 5.5 million years, I now turn to the topic of Language.
In The Humanity of Fossil Man, Glenn Morton reviews a series of uniquely human qualities for which evidence predating Homo Sapiens has been found. This list includes: religion, building activities, music (100 kya), mining (110 kya), jewelry (110 kya), scalping (400 kya), tents (400 kya), weapons (400 kya), murder (400 kya), woodworking (750 kya), boat building (700 kya), fossil/mineral collecting (900 kya), tanning (1.0 mya), hunting (1.0 mya), fire (1.5 mya), art (1.6 mya), right-handedness (1.9 mya), language (2.0 mya), and stone tools (2.6 mya). Now, none of these dates proves when the given quality actually arose, but merely the earliest time such evidence was recorded in a known fossil. For example, if Noah goes back 5.5 mya, then so do Cain and Abel, and so does murder, even if the first murder recorded in a known fossil record occurred 400,000 years ago. That said, of all of the human qualities listed above, the one that really grabs my attention is language. The reason is because of what scripture tells us about some of the first usages of language.
Borrowing a play from the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) handbook, Genesis 2 records the first time a man named the animals, and Genesis 11 is the first time more than one language was ever spoken. The reason this is so easy to believe for a YEC is because the earth was young in their mind. Adam was the first man, and so the animals had no names; Noah’s descendants did not disperse until they tried building a tower to Heaven, and God confounded them with multiple languages. Usually, an Old Earth Creationist (OEC) would discard such an interpretation, assuming these events to be regional and recent, even if mankind’s appearance is not. However, suppose the scriptures are seriously telling us that animals had no names before Adam was born, and the world had only one language before the tower of babel was started. Given the unlikelihood of these events occurring too long after mankind developed the capacity for language, we are left with several choices. One is that the fossil record does not mean what it appears to; another is that Adam and the tower of Babel happened shortly after mankind obtained the ability to speak… but as we will see, the known fossil record suggests mankind could speak at least 2 million years ago.
To summarize Morton’s article above, the human brain is different than other mammals. On the one hand, humans and other mammals have structures in common within their “midbrain, diencephalon and limbic cortices,” which contribute to innate sounds such as “laughter, sobbing, groans, sighs, and shrieks.” On the other hand, it is the neocortical areas of the brain that humans alone use to speak.
Luckily the part of the brain which controls speech leave marks on the inside of the skull bones and thus are fossilized. We can examine the fossils and see when the earliest skull was which had those markings. These brain areas are Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. The first appearance of these structures in a skull occurs 2.0 million years ago in the skull KNM-ER 1470. (Dean Falk, Braindance,(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), p. 50)
Most anthropologists believe that mankind has been talking at least that long.
Recalling from Does “Full Humanity” Predate Homo Sapiens? (Part 2 - Neanderthals) that Neanderthals branched off from our ancestral line 600,000 years ago, this implies that they would most likely have had the capability for speech as well. It is therefore not surprising that the neanderthal vocal tract (according to reconstruction studies) would have supported speech, and their cultural patterns are consistent with speech-capable societies as well. This is not to say that their speech capabilities are the same as homo sapiens, but that is not the point, as homo erectus appears to have similarly accommodating vocal tracts as well, suggesting both Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens inherited their vocal tract structures from a common ancestor.
Related to the development of speech is the development of right-handedness, as both are “associated with brain lateralization.” Right-handedness can be determined from how a tool is made. According to Morton, other mammals are just as likely to favor their right side as their left. Hominids however show signs of being mostly right-handed very shortly after the first stone tools. In conjunction with the appearance of the speech-oriented brain fossils dating back 2 million years ago, right-handedness dates back at least 1.9 million years… pretty close if you think about it.
Now, let us take this to the next level, and compare the science to the scriptures. If one is to believe the scientific evidence, then homo was capable of actual speech, both physically and cognitively, at least 2 million years ago. At the same time, if one assumes that Adam in fact was the first person to name the animals, then it would seem unlikely for them to have gone unnamed from 2 mya until 10,000 years ago. One reasonable explanation is that God wasn’t having Adam name the animals for the first time. Another is that Genesis 2 happened at least 2 million years ago.
Genesis 2:19 says that, “out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.” This does not have to mean that there was no other name for them already; it could mean that God just wanted to see what Adam would call them. Another reasonable explanation is the YECs are correct that this was a first, but are incorrect about when it happened. If Adam was in fact the first person to name the animals, then the fossil record suggests it happened at least 2 million years ago.
If that isn’t convincing enough, then consider Genesis 11:
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
This makes it seem unlikely that mankind would have gone very long without developing multiple languages naturally, implying this course shift in humanity occurred very early after speech capabilities evolved. On the other hand, this could have simply been a local event, happening to a local population. On the other other hand, a young humanity might only be local. Once again, we are left with two reasonably logical conclusions. The first is that the tower of babel happened at least 2 million years ago; the other is that a local event was written and translated in global-sounding terms. Without committing position for myself, the bottom line is that the tower of babel may really go back to 2 million years ago or before. Therefore, so might the flood. Therefore, so might Adam.
One other sticking point is the technology with which the tower was built. According to Wikipedia, the oldest known bricks date back to 7,500 B.C, and I am implying that mankind was building bricks millions of years ago. Well, for this I appeal to God’s own intentions, as stated in verses 6 and 7. His goal was to prevent mankind from accomplishing such feats as building a tower, at least for some extended time. The logical conclusion is that God succeeded, and that mankind was therefore incapable of building such towers until around 9,500 years ago. I will admit that I would need more research to back this up, but it is a biblical explanation.
In my next installment, I will explore the evidence for dating humanity even further back than 2 million years. So far however, as I trace through Morton’s evidence, while I see no slam dunk, his arguments appear to be reasonable.