Two critical mutations appeared roughly 200,000 years ago in a gene linked to language, then swept through the population at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans began to dominate the planet, according to new research.

The findings, released online yesterday and due for publication soon in the journal Nature, provide the most compelling evidence to date that the gene, which researchers described in detail only last year, may have played a central role in the development of modern humans’ ability to speak. Researchers said that could have given them a critical advantage that allowed them to supplant more primitive rivals…

The research indicates the genetic mutations may at least partly explain why humans can speak and animals cannot. Researchers are likely to try to introduce the genetic mutations into mice as part of their work, but they said many other genetic changes would likely be necessary to produce a talking animal, and several said they doubted anything of the sort would ever be possible, let alone desirable.

The new research was led by Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He and his colleagues were careful not to claim in their paper that they had identified the key molecular event in the birth of human culture. But the paper added fresh evidence to the notion that they have identified at least one of the keys. Washington Post