The Proto-Human language (also Proto-Sapiens, Proto-World) is the hypothetical most recent common ancestor of all the world's languages.
The concept of "Proto-Human" presupposes monogenesis of all recorded spoken human languages. It does not presuppose monogenesis of these languages with unrecorded languages, such as those of the Paleolithic or hypothetical Neanderthal languages. Advocates of linguistic polygenesis do not accept the notion of a fully developed Proto-Human language and consider the world's language families independent developments of a proto-linguistic form of communication used by archaic Homo sapiens.
If the assumption of a "Proto-Human" language is accepted, its date may be set anywhere between 200,000 years ago (the age of Homo sapiens) and 50,000 years ago (the age of behavioral modernity).
Read more about Proto-Human Language: Terminology, History of The Idea, Date and Location, Characteristics, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)