Turkana Boy - Vocal Capabilities

Vocal Capabilities

The fossil skeleton and other fossil evidence such as Acheulean stone tools prompt the majority of scientists to conclude that Homo ergaster and Homo erectus - unlike their more primitive ancestors – became efficient hunters. The social structure would probably have become more complex with a larger brain volume; the Broca's area of the brain allows speech and is noted by a slight slant on the cranium. However, there are different views on the origin of language:

• 1.9 million years ago (Homo habilis had a large Broca's area able to be seen in the cranium of KNM ER 1813), possible signs of the earliest ability for speech.
• 1.5 million years ago, on the arrival of several distinct more human-like hominins spread throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia (i.e., Homo erectus).
• 600,000 and 150,000 years ago when archaic Homo sapiens dominated regions in the Pleistocene epoch (several members during this period are considered fully modern Homo sapiens)
• 50,000 years ago (fully modern Homo sapiens had already spread through the Old World and slowly into the New World 20,000 BCE. Some believe language coincided solely with modern humans once culture was established by groups such as Cro-Magnon man in Europe. It is still a matter of debate whether Neanderthals had a modern form of language.

Turkana Boy's thoracic vertebrae are narrower than in Homo sapiens. This would have allowed him less motor control over the thoracic muscles that are used in modern humans to modify respiration to enable the sequencing upon single out breaths of complex vocalizations.