Read: A rare universal pattern in human languages In fact, they propose that the necessary equipment-specifically, the throat shape and motor control that produce distinguishable vowels-has been around as long as 27 million years, when humans and Old World monkeys (baboons, mandrills, and the like) last shared a common ancestor. Its authors argue that the anatomical ingredients for speech were present in our ancestors much earlier than 200,000 years ago. This line of thinking became known as laryngeal descent theory, or LDT.ДЄ new review paper, published yesterday in Science Advances, aims to tear down the LDT completely. That would mean that speech-and, therefore, language-couldnвЂ™t have evolved until the arrival of anatomically modern Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago (or, per a fossil discovery from 2017, about 300,000 years ago). And for decades, they thought that low-down larynx was a sort of secret ingredient to speech because it enabled its bearers to produce a variety of distinctive vowels, like the ones that make beet, bat, and boot sound like different words.

Scientists have agreed for a while that the organ is lower down the throat in humans than it is in any other primate, or was in our ancestors. The larynx, also called the voice box, is where the trouble begins: Its location is, or was, supposed to be the key to language. Feign a phone call if you have to.) You should feel a buzzing-thatвЂ™s your vocal folds vibrating inside your larynx. Put your fingertips against your throat and say вЂњabracadabra.вЂќ (DonвЂ™t whisper it wonвЂ™t work.

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