By Victoria Gill Science
reporter, BBC News
9 February 2017
Scientists who spent years
listening to the communication calls of one of our closest ape relatives say
their eavesdropping has shed light on the origin of human language.
Dr Adriano Reis e Lameira from
Durham University recorded and analysed almost 5,000 orangutan "kiss
squeaks".
He found that the animals
combined these purse-lipped, "consonant-like" calls to convey
different messages.
This could be a glimpse of how
our ancestors formed the earliest words.
The findings are published in the
journal Nature Human Behaviour.
"Human language is
extraordinarily advanced and complex - we can pretty much transmit any
information we want into sound," said Dr Reis e Lameira.
"So we tend to think that
maybe words evolved from some rudimentary precursor to transmit more complex
messages.
"We were basically using the
orangutan vocal behaviour as a time machine - back to a time when our ancestors
were using what would become [those precursors] of consonants and vowels."
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