Differences in Gene Determines Humans' Unique Language Ability

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 15, 2002

Differences in Gene Determines Humans' Unique Language Ability

Two changes in one gene may explain why only humans developed spoken language, German scientists reported in the British science journal Nature to be published on Thursday.

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Two changes in one gene may explain why only humans developed spoken language, German scientists reported in the British science journal Nature to be published on Thursday.

The FOXP2 gene was found to be linked to human language last year. People who have a mutated form of the gene will have severe difficulties with speech and grammar.

Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues compared the human FOXP2 gene with the forms of the gene in chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, rhesus macaques and mice.

Human FOXP2 contained two key changes in its DNA compared with the other animals. Except for the two changes, the gene was almost identical in humans and the other animals examined.

The changes may affect human ability to make fine movements of the mouth and larynx, and thus to develop spoken language, suggested Wolfgang Enard, a scientist involved in the research.

"This is hopefully the first of many language genes to be discovered," Enard said.

The gene variant that permits language may have become widespread during the last 200,000 years, based on analyses of thehuman gene from individuals worldwide, Enard estimated.

It was around this time that anatomically modern humans emerged.The development of language may have been an important driving force behind human expansion. It allowed large amounts of information to be passed from one generation to the next.

Language is unique to humans. Chimpanzees can be trained to communicate using a complex set of symbols, but they can pronounceonly a handful of words because they cannot make the required facial movements.

The possibility that language has genetic roots was first raised in the 1960s. Scientists argue that there must be a geneticbasis to speech and language, which is universal, complex and acquired almost instinctively by children at a young age.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

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