Unlike ancient bones and stone tools, language does not fossilize.
Researchers have to guess about its origins based on proxy indicators.
Does painting cave walls indicate the capacity for language? How about the ability to make a fancy tool?
Yet, in recent years, scientists have made some progress.
A series of brain imaging studies by Dietrich Stout, an archaeologist at Emory University in Atlanta, and Thierry Chaminade, a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille University in France, have shown that toolmaking and language use similar parts of the brain, including regions involved in manual manipulations and speech production. Moreover, the overlap is greater the more sophisticated the toolmaking techniques are.
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