How did we go from grunts and “ooh”s and “ah”s to complex modern languages? And why haven’t other animals done the same?
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Other animals are able to communicate but not to the same level of detail as humans.
It takes a combination of a large and complex brain as well as the ability to make complex sounds.
Whale songs for example are incredibly complex and it is still unclear if they are communicating on any sort of significant level. While ants communicate with chemical signals, bees with dancing, and Crows seem to be able to communicate as well.
Parrots can make all the sounds that we can and more but don’t have the brain power to have complex conversations.
Dogs and Cats can understand individual words and commands, but are far more limited compared to us in what they can process. But they lack the human like vocal cords to speak.
There is currently a working theory that Neanderthal wasn’t able to speak the way that we do as their skull shape wouldn’t have allowed it. They may have instead had a complex sign language.
Humans speak with our hands instinctively and use hand signs to coordinate hunting. This practice extends to the military that still uses hand signals to communicate in battle.
It’s possible that sign language predates complex human speech. Part of the evidence for this is that Neanderthal signed their artwork with a hand print, showing that their hands had more significance to them in terms of personality than we do today.
Also while sign language is not universal (there are many different sign languages) using hand signals to communicate among the deaf *is* a universal concept. It seems that when humans can’t speak we default back to using sign language.
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