Evolution and Language
If you read Chinese, there are a couple of good sites that look at character etymology:
http://www.zdic.net/z/22/js/8345.htm
http://xh.5156edu.com/hzyb/a4785b47581c97319d.htmlIf you’re confined to English, here are a couple of good sites:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E5%90%88
http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E9%80%A0
The Institute of Creation Research has a bullshit article about how Chinese characters tell Bible stories:
http://www.icr.org/article/genesis-chinese-pictographs/And some of the videos I showed can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK559_ZuQH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YjZMahFuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM6NmbypvL8My claim that two papers “confirm” a theory that language came from Africa got a bit of a roasting, and deservedly so. It would be more accurate to say they “support” the theory. My reason for saying this is not just one of the papers that I mentioned in the video:
“Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa” - Quentin Atkinson, Science, April 2011.
There is also fossil evidence that humans and neanderthals had a hyoid bone located in a position consistent with speech, which suggests they share a common ancestor who could speak — and the common ancestor of humans and neanderthals lived in Africa.I don’t know of any study — I may be wrong — that suggests language originated prior to 60,000 years ago, when the human diaspora began. Unfortunately since this was not the main topic of the video I didn’t research this too deeply or mention a lot of the supporting evidence or the controversy among linguists.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/03/28/votes-and-vowels-a-changing-accent-shows-how-language-parallels-politics/#.UMae6ndLNt4