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1.3.11The FOXP2 Gene and the Evolution of Language
In 1990, Steven Pinker hypothesized that language evolved in humans by conventional Darwinian natural selection (Section 1.5 discusses natural selection). Chomsky, who first described brain-based universal grammar, did not go that far. Twelve years later, in 2002, a team of German and British geneticists published genetic evidence strongly supporting Pinker. They discovered that a particular gene, FOXP2, plays a vital role in processing speech and grammar.
FOXP2 exists in other primates such as the chimpanzee, but the human form of the gene differs. The human form may have appeared 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Communication by language gradually replaced communication by gesture. Language was the breakthrough technology that resulted in symbolic thinking and the cultural explosion that defines what it is to be human.