IF IT weren鈥檛 for one or two recent tweaks in a gene known to be crucial to speech, we would still be communicating in grunts. Svante P盲盲bo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig sequenced the gene FOXP2 from humans, other primates and mice. They found two changes that occurred sometime in the past 200,000 years 鈥� around the same time as the appearance of anatomically modern humans (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature01025).
FOXP2 switches on other genes, although scientists don鈥檛 yet know which. P盲盲bo thinks they probably allowed our ancestors to articulate more complicated sounds and improve their communication.
