How Human Language May Have Evolved From the Way Orangutans Communicate

Madelyn Leembruggen of SciShow explained how human language may have evolved from orangutans due to their use of stacked modifiers, tempo, rhythm and recursive grammar, which scientists recorded after they provoked an alarm call.

The general alarm call announces something is there, the tempo of the bouts seems to indicate urgency or importance, and the rhythm of those super short combinations seems to  contain information about the specific threat.

Leembruggen further explained how this connects to the origins of human language.

Now, this doesn’t mean that orangutans  are speaking in complex sentences…But it does provide evidence that complex recursive grammar could have evolved slowly from more basic forms of recursion that appeared before we split off from other apes. So what started off as rhythms embedded in sounds  may have evolved into sounds embedded in words, which turned into words embedded in phrases,  and then finally phrases into complex sentences.