This haunts me. Gorillas and chimps are crazy smart and can be taught sign language, so why can’t they speak? They have human-like mouths and they’re obviously vocal, so why don’t they at least have the vocabulary of a toddler?
In:
Some point in the last 5 million years after we forked away from the last common ancestor shared, in newfound isolation both groups started developing genetic differences that were beneficial to them.. Every new born gets 60 genetic mutations where each one can big or small, good or bad..
Pretty much every racial characteristic we have come from mutations that we embrace collectively
At some point a child was born with the FOXP2 gene, a new genetic mutation.. It granted a very subtle difference that allowed the kid to not just grunt out emotional outbursts, but to use vocalizations as constant identifiers for recognizable objects and such which was much more energy efficient than belting out emotional outbursts as sole means of communication. Some accepted it, some didn’t.. There were other forks but the subset of homo genus that embraced speech among many other energy efficient changes likely aided them in proliferating into today’s modern day human
To this very day people are (Very rarely) born with mutations where the FOXP2 gene disappears just as mysteriously as any genetic trait appears.. They have great difficulty using speech even though there is no detectable physical difference
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