Mother of All Languages

The world's 6,000 or so modern languages may have all descended from a single ancestral tongue spoken by early African humans around 50,000 years ago, a new study suggests. The finding could help explain how the first spoken language emerged, spread and contributed to the evolutionary success of the human species. Quentin Atkinson, an evolutionary psychologist and author of the study, found that the first migrating populations leaving Africa laid the groundwork for all the world's cultures by taking their single language with them -- the mother of all mother tongues. "It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of," Dr. Atkinson said.

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