The Mother of All Languages

@Born African, don't say that there is no scientific reason without reading the paper, which lays out a perfectly valid scientific justification.

There is no scientific reason to support the notion that language started with many phonemes and gradually reduced to fewer. That is an assumption based on the belief that man originated in Africa and is therefore circular reasoning.

In evolutionary terms one would always expect that earlier languages would have fewest phonemes, and that with increasing sophistication, more phonemes would be added as necessary.

What has resulted in a gradual reduction in the number of phonemes in modern languages was the invention of writing.

If you exclude Egyptian, Afrikaans, Swahili and Arabic (the earliest written form for languages such as Yoruba), the first African language to develop writing was probably Tswana, where the first book, the Bible, was published in 1857. That is very recent in language terms.

Tswana has already lost one fricative and other phonemes current exist only for old words that are seldom-used, and for loan words from other languages. Modernisation has started.

I guess to clarify the question; as the part played by an actor in a play is just an appearance, and as it has no life of it's own independent of the actor, is the human "person" or "personality" just an appearance or part played by something else? Perhaps a part played by the unconscious or even further by nature herself?

What's most important about this research is that human language used to use less phonemes. That the research corroborates the evidence that humans originated in africa is valuable, but what I find particularly interesting is the phonemes.

I'm well aware that language has evolved. As in the case of the distinctions of personhood and non-personhood which originated or were formalized with Tertulian c. 400 A.D. This is an important fact when considering the writings and inscriptions of cultures before this time. The term "person" comes from Latin "persona" a term used in Roman plays to refer to the role played by the actor. A persona therefor was the outward facing appearance of a part. And this came to refer to the "persona" or "personality" of individual humans. Whereas before this time, its likely that there was no such concept of personhood. This could explain why so much of the literature from the time depicts natural forces as personal and persons as impersonal interchangably with modern usage. The intriguing question for me then is, is personhood a really valid distinction or has its meaning changed since Tertulian, and/or is the evolved distinction truthful?

Even obvious scientific findings are important. Sometimes the obvious isn't necessarily true, and is why such phenomena still warrant investigation.

Until the late 19th century the Western medical consensus overwhelmingly agreed that bloodletting was a valuable cure-all medical treatment for all sorts of ailments. Regardless the efficacy of bloodletting was empirically investigated and in this case the results suggested the opposite of the obvious was true. In almost all cases bloodletting did more harm that good and increased the risk of mortality. Bloodletting is argued to be the cause of George Washington's death after 4lbs of blood was drained to treat a throat infection.

While admittedly it took some time for the medical and scientific communities to be convinced, based on these findings they eventually did a complete 180 and ceased the use of bloodletting as a means of treatment for all but a select few specific conditions.

That is why science is so cool - it is a self-correcting process that actively seeks and promotes the truth even in the face of overwhelming "obvious" assumptions to the contrary.

So think about that the next time you feel yourself about to say "well isn't it obvious?" to a scientific finding.