Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
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Language is unique to humans.a Children as young as seven months can understand and learn grammatical rules.b Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) show that language is learned only from other humans; humans do not automatically speak. So, the first humans must have been endowed with a language ability. There is no evidence language evolved.c
Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language requires both vocabulary and grammar. With great effort, human trainers have taught some gorillas and chimpanzees to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by editing the animals’ successes on film. (Some early demonstrations were flawed by the trainer’s hidden promptings.d)
Wild apes have not shown these vocabulary skills, and trained apes do not pass their vocabulary on to others. When a trained animal dies, so does the trainer’s investment. Also, trained apes have essentially no grammatical ability. Only with grammar can a few words express many ideas. No known evidence shows that language exists or evolves in nonhumans, but all known human groups have language.e
Furthermore, only humans have different modes of language: speaking/hearing, writing/reading, signing, touch (as with Braille), and tapping (as with Morse code or tap-codes used by prisoners). When one mode is prevented, as with the loss of hearing, others can be used.f
If language evolved, the earliest languages should be the simplest. But language studies show that the more ancient the language (for example: Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; Linear B, 1200 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.), the more complex it is with respect to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, verb forms, and inflection. The best evidence shows that languages devolve; that is, they become simpler instead of more complex.g Most linguists reject the idea that simple languages evolve into complex languages.h [See Figure 248 on page 551.]
If humans evolved, then so did language. All available evidence indicates that language did not evolve, so humans probably did not evolve.