January 22, 2009

Quantum Leap: Information Teleported between Ions at a Distance

Link between spatially separated ions could form the basis of quantum communications

By John Matson   

 

SPOOKY ACTION: Quantum entanglement, famously dubbed "spooky action at a distance" by Albert Einstein, is harnessed in a new study to teleport quantum information from one ion to another.
Library of Congress

 

Quantum entanglement, whereby two or more objects are linked by an unseen connection, has some famously spooky effects. As quantum researcher Anton Zeilinger has said, entanglement can be thought of as a pair of dice that always land on the same number.

One of the most intriguing applications of this entanglement is quantum teleportation, in which the quantum state of a particle or atom is transferred to its entangled partner, even if they are separated physically. Such relaying of quantum information could form the backbone of long-distance quantum communication channels, but such a network remains far on the horizon.

A group of researchers, however, report today in Science that they've made headway in quantum teleportation, and thus communication. The team, led by physics graduate student Steven Olmschenk at the University of Maryland, College Park, succeeded in teleporting quantum information between ytterbium ions (charged atoms) three feet (one meter) apart.

Quantum teleportation has been demonstrated over macroscopic distances—hundreds of meters in at least one case—for photons, the fundamental particles of electromagnetic radiation, but ions are better candidates for quantum memory because they can store information for relatively long periods of time. (Christopher Monroe, a study co-author and the leader of the trapped-ion research group to which Olmschenk and several other co-authors belong, wrote about the potential for ions to serve as quantum bits, or qubits, in Scientific American last year.) The fundamental advantage of quantum information systems is that whereas a conventional digital bit can be 0 or 1, a qubit can be in a so-called superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Information is teleported from one ion to another by encoding quantum information onto the first ion. Once the ion is entangled with another, the state of each ion is indefinite until the first one is measured—an action that projects the other ion into one of two states. Conventional (nonquantum) communication channels relay information, gleaned from the first ion's measurement, as to which of those two states is correct, and a pulse of microwave energy sets the second ion into the state representing the information encoded on the first.

"We write information to the first ion, we perform this teleportation protocol, and it transfers the information over to the second ion," Olmschenk explains. He notes that this is the first teleportation experiment between two matter qubits that were a long distance apart.

Paul Kwiat, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, says that distant teleportation between potential qubits of quantum memory is a definite milestone. "The whole point of teleportation is getting the information far away," Kwiat says, noting that in prior micron-scale teleportation demonstrations with matter qubits, the researchers might have been better off simply moving the qubits physically from point to point. (A micron is one millionth of a meter, or about one twenty-five-thousandth of an inch.)

The ability to transmit information between bits of quantum memory could form the basis of so-called quantum repeaters, point-to-point networks that relay data down the line. "The idea is to in some sense boost the information along the way—to send it a short distance and then have it in some sense be amplified and sent on again and again to complete a transfer over a long distance," Olmschenk says.

Kwiat also sees this work finding applications in quantum communication as a link between quantum processors. But he would like to see the system boosted to higher operating speeds—in the current incarnation it takes an average of 12 minutes, or about 30 million attempts, to secure entanglement between a pair of ions.

Olmschenk agrees. "If you want to use this for real quantum communication purposes," he says, "we'd like it to go much faster." Toward that end, he says that small improvements in collecting and detecting the photons emitted by the ions, which are used to establish ion-to-ion entanglement, could provide a major boost in teleportation efficiency.

I hope men fix things before it's too late - Are men becoming extinct?

Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study. Geoffrey Lean reports

Sunday, 7 December 2008

The male gender is in danger, with incalculable consequences for both humans and wildlife, startling scientific research from around the world reveals.

The research – to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published – shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.

Backed by some of the world's leading scientists, who say that it "waves a red flag" for humanity and shows that evolution itself is being disrupted, the report comes out at a particularly sensitive time for ministers. On Wednesday, Britain will lead opposition to proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have "gender-bending" effects.

It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.

"This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat," says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.

Wildlife and people have been exposed to more than 100,000 new chemicals in recent years, and the European Commission has admitted that 99 per cent of them are not adequately regulated. There is not even proper safety information on 85 per cent of them.

Many have been identified as "endocrine disrupters" – or gender-benders – because they interfere with hormones. These include phthalates, used in food wrapping, cosmetics and baby powders among other applications; flame retardants in furniture and electrical goods; PCBs, a now banned group of substances still widespread in food and the environment; and many pesticides.

The report – published by the charity CHEMTrust and drawing on more than 250 scientific studies from around the world – concentrates mainly on wildlife, identifying effects in species ranging from the polar bears of the Arctic to the eland of the South African plains, and from whales in the depths of the oceans to high-flying falcons and eagles.

It concludes: "Males of species from each of the main classes of vertebrate animals (including bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) have been affected by chemicals in the environment.

"Feminisation of the males of numerous vertebrate species is now a widespread occurrence. All vertebrates have similar sex hormone receptors, which have been conserved in evolution. Therefore, observations in one species may serve to highlight pollution issues of concern for other vertebrates, including humans."

Fish, it says, are particularly affected by pollutants as they are immersed in them when they swim in contaminated water, taking them in not just in their food but through their gills and skin. They were among the first to show widespread gender-bending effects.

Half the male fish in British lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes; in some stretches all male roaches have been found to be changing sex in this way. Female hormones – largely from the contraceptive pills which pass unaltered through sewage treatment – are partly responsible, while more than three-quarters of sewage works have been found also to be discharging demasculinising man-made chemicals. Feminising effects have now been discovered in a host of freshwater fish species as far away as Japan and Benin, in Africa, and in sea fish in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Osaka Bay in Japan and Puget Sound on the US west coast.

Research at the University of Florida earlier this year found that 40 per cent of the male cane toads – a species so indestructible that it has become a plague in Australia – had become hermaphrodites in a heavily farmed part of the state, with another 20 per cent undergoing lesser feminisation. A similar link between farming and sex changes in northern leopard frogs has been revealed by Canadian research, adding to suspicions that pesticides may be to blame.

Male alligators exposed to pesticides in Florida have suffered from lower testosterone and higher oestrogen levels, abnormal testes, smaller penises and reproductive failures. Male snapping turtles have been found with female characteristics in the same state and around the Great Lakes, where wildlife has been found to be contaminated with more than 400 different chemicals. Male herring gulls and peregrine falcons have produced the female protein used to make egg yolks, while bald eagles have had difficulty reproducing in areas highly contaminated with chemicals.

Scientists at Cardiff University have found that the brains of male starlings who ate worms contaminated by female hormones at a sewage works in south-west England were subtly changed so that they sang at greater length and with increased virtuosity.

Even more ominously for humanity, mammals have also been found to be widely affected.

Two-thirds of male Sitka black-tailed deer in Alaska have been found to have undescended testes and deformed antler growth, and roughly the same proportion of white-tailed deer in Montana were discovered to have genital abnormalities.

In South Africa, eland have been revealed to have damaged testicles while being contaminated by high levels of gender-bender chemicals, and striped mice from one polluted nature reserved were discovered to be producing no sperm at all.

At the other end of the world, hermaphrodite polar bears – with penises and vaginas – have been discovered and gender-benders have been found to reduce sperm counts and penis lengths in those that remained male. Many of the small, endangered populations of Florida panthers have been found to have abnormal sperm.

Other research has revealed otters from polluted areas with smaller testicles and mink exposed to PCBs with shorter penises. Beluga whales in Canada's St Lawrence estuary and killer whales off its north-west coast – two of the wildlife populations most contaminated by PCBs – are reproducing poorly, as are exposed porpoises, seals and dolphins.

Scientists warned yesterday that the mass of evidence added up to a grave warning for both wildlife and humans. Professor Charles Tyler, an expert on endocrine disrupters at the University of Exeter, says that the evidence in the report "set off alarm bells". Whole wildlife populations could be at risk, he said, because their gene pool would be reduced, making them less able to withstand disease and putting them at risk from hazards such as global warming.

Dr Pete Myers, chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, one of the world's foremost authorities on gender-bender chemicals, added: "We have thrown 100, 000 chemicals against a finely balanced hormone system, so it's not surprising that we are seeing some serious results. It is leading to the most rapid pace of evolution in the history of the world.

Professor Lou Gillette of Florida University, one of the most respected academics in the field, warned that the report waved "a large red flag" at humanity. He said: "If we are seeing problems in wildlife, we can be concerned that something similar is happening to a proportion of human males"

Indeed, new research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation. And a study at Rotterdam's Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys.

Communities heavily polluted with gender-benders in Canada, Russia and Italy have given birth to twice as many girls than boys, which may offer a clue to the reason for a mysterious shift in sex ratios worldwide. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls, but the ratio is slipping. It is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born as girls instead in the US and Japan alone.

And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per millilitre of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years. (Hamsters produce nearly three times as much, at 160 million.) Professor Nil Basu of Michigan University says that this adds up to "pretty compelling evidence for effects in humans".

But Britain has long sought to water down EU attempts to control gender-bender chemicals and has been leading opposition to a new regulation that would ban pesticides shown to have endocrine-disrupting effects. Almost all the other European countries back it, but ministers – backed by their counterparts from Ireland and Romania – are intent on continuing their resistance at a crucial meeting on Wednesday. They say the regulation would cause a collapse of agriculture in the UK, but environmentalists retort that this is nonsense because the regulation has get-out clauses that could be used by British farmers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/its-official-men-really-are-the-weaker-sex-1055688.html









Are men becoming extinct?




Are males becoming an endangered species? That’s the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world.





BY THE WINDSOR STARNOVEMBER 5, 2008



Are males becoming an endangered species?

That’s the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world.

More and more boys are being born with genital defects and are suffering from learning disabilities, autism and Tour-ett’s syndrome, among other disorders.

Male infertility rates are on the rise and the quality of an average man’s sperm is declining, according to some studies.

But perhaps the most disconcerting of all trends is the growing gender imbalance in many parts of heavily industrialized nations, where the births of baby boys have been declining for many years.

What many scientists are calling the most important — and least publicized — issue surrounding the future of the human race will be highlighted in a CBC documentary that features two Windsor researchers who’ve studied the phenomenon.

Titled The Disappearing Male and premiering tonight at 9 on CBC TV, the documentary includes interviews with Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith, adjunct sociology professors at the University of Windsor.

They have been studying the decline in the birth of male children in the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community located next to the infamous Chemical Valley, Canada’s largest concentration of petrochemical plants near Sarnia.

A paper co-authored by Keith and published three years ago in the U.S. journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggests that exposure to various chemicals produced by industrial plants surrounding the Aamjiwnaang reserve land may be skewing the community’s sex ratio.

The researchers looked at the community’s birth records since 1984 and saw “a dramatic drop in the number of boys being born in the last 10 years, particularly in the five-year period between 1998 and 2003,” Brophy said.

Of 132 Aamjiwnaang babies born between 1999 and 2003, only 46 were boys. Typically, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls in Canada.

High miscarriage rates and a unusually high number of children suffering from asthma were also noted by researchers.

Although the link between pollutants and human reproduction has not been firmly established, there is growing evidence that the birth sex ratio can be altered by exposure to certain chemicals, such as dioxin, PCBs and pesticides. Brophy said studies done in the United States, Japan and Europe seem to support the theory that the so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals have a particular effect on males.

Some of these chemicals are found in commonly used products such as baby bottles and cosmetics. They can also cause miscarriages and a “whole host” of disorders in a male child, Brophy said.

Brophy said soil and water contamination in and around the Aamjiwnaang reserve had been documented before, including in a University of Windsor study that found high levels of PCBs, lead, mercury and various chemicals in the area in the late 1990s. Accidental chemical spills in the area have not been uncommon.

But it wasn’t until the Aamjiwnaang birth ratio study was published that the global science community really took notice.

“It triggered this international set of calls from scientists and researchers from around the world who had been looking at this issue in Europe and the United States,” Brophy said. “Aamjiwnaang became almost the poster child.”

Although Brophy has not seen The Disappearing Male documentary yet, he believes the story of the Aamjiwnaang community will be “the focal point.”

He said the documentary also includes interviews with “some of the foremost experts in the world” on environmental effects on reproductive health.

Brophy and Keith have also studied other occupational and environmental exposures to pollutants, including the link between breast cancer and certain types of jobs in the Windsor-Essex region.

Another interesting Article - The Origin of Language (by Edward Vajda)

... Yesterday we discussed the gulf that separates the creative use of language by humans from the inborn signals of animals.  Bees returning from their first flight out of the hive know perfectly how to perform their complex nectar dances. With humans, the precise form of language must be acquired through exposure to a speech community.  Words are definitely not inborn, but the capacity to acquire and language and use it creatively seems to be inborn. Noam Chomsky calls this ability the LAD (Language Acquisition Device).  Today we will ask two questions: how did this language instinct in humans originate? And how did the first language come into being?
      Concerning the origin of the first language, there are two main hypotheses, or beliefs.  Neither can be proven or disproved given present knowledge.
1) Belief in divine creation.  Many societies throughout history believed that language is the gift of the gods to humans.  The most familiar is found in Genesis 2:20, which tells us that Adam gave names to all living creatures.  This belief predicates that humans were created from the start with an innate capacity to use language. 
      It can't be proven that language is as old as humans, but it is definitely true that language and human society are inseparable.  Wherever humans exist language exists.  Every stone age tribe ever encountered has a language equal to English, Latin, or Greek in terms of its expressive potential and grammatical complexity.  Technologies may be complex or simple, but language is always complex. Charles Darwin noted this fact when he stated that as far as concerns language, "Shakespeare walks with the Macedonian swineherd, and Plato with the wild savage of Assam." In fact, it sometimes seems that languages spoken by preindustrial societies are much more complex grammatically than languages such as English (example: English has about seven tense forms and three noun genders; Kivunjo, a Bantu language spoken on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, has 14 tenses and about 20 noun classes.) There are no primitive languages, nor are any known to have existed in the past--even among the most remote tribes of stone age hunter-gatherers. 
      Nevertheless, it is impossible to prove that the first anatomically modern humans possessed creative language. It is also impossible to disprove the hypothesis that primitive languages might have existed at some point in the distant past of Homo sapiens development.
2) Natural evolution hypothesis. At some point in their evolutionary development humans acquired a more sophisticated brain which made language invention and learning possible.  In other words, at some point in time humans evolved a language acquisition device, whatever this may be in real physical terms.  The simple vocalizations and gestures inherited from our primate ancestors then quickly gave way to a creative system of language--perhaps within a single generation or two. /Mention the hypothesis about rewiring the visual cortex of the brain into a language area./  According to the natural evolution hypothesis, as soon as humans developed the biological, or neurological, capacity for creative language, the cultural development of some specific system of forms with meanings would have been an inevitable next step. 
      This hypothesis cannot be proven either.  Archeological evidence unearthed thus far, seems to indicate that modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged within the last 150,000 years.  By 30,000, BC all other species of humanoids seem to have been supplanted by Homo sapiens.  Could the success of our species vis-a-vis other hominids be explained by its possession of superior communicative skills?  Speaking people could teach, plan, organize, and convey more sophisticated information.  This would have given them unparalleled advantage over hominid groups without creative language.  Of course, no one knows whether other species of humanoids--Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalis -- used creative language.  Perhaps they also did. In any case, Homo sapiens, "the wise human," should perhaps really be called Homo loquens, "the speaking human" because language and humans are everywhere found together, whereas wisdom among humans is much more selectively distributed.
Invention hypotheses. Moving on to our second question, if humans acquired the capacity for language either by divine gift or by evolution, then exactly how might humans have devised the first language? There are several hypotheses as to how language might have been consciously invented by humans based on a more primitive system of hominid communication.  Each hypothesis is predicated on the idea that the invention of language and its gradual refinement served as a continuous impetus to additional human mental development. None of the invention hypotheses I will mention is convincing and most sane linguists agree that the origin of language is still a mystery.  But the inventive, sarcastic names given these hypotheses by their critics prove that even linguists can at times be creative.
      First, there are four imitation hypotheses that hold that language began through some sort of human mimicry of naturally occurring sounds or movements:
1) The "ding-dong" hypothesis.  Language began when humans started naming objects, actions and phenomena after a recognizable sound associated with it in real life.  This hypothesis holds that the first human words were a type of verbal icon, a sign whose form is an exact image of its meaning: crash became the word for thunder, boom for explosion.  Some words in language obviously did derive from imitation of natural sounds associated with some object: Chinook Indian word for heart--tun-tun, Basque word for knife: ai-ai (literally ouch-ouch).  Each of these iconic words would derive from an index, a sign whose form is naturally associatied with its meaning in real space and time.
      The problem with this hypothesis is that onomatopoeia (imitation of sound, auditory iconicity) is a very limited part of the vocabulary of any language; imitative sounds differ from language to language: Russian: ba-bakh=bang, bukh= thud.  Even if onomotopoeia provided the first dozen or so words, then where did names for the thousands of naturally noiseless concepts such as rock, sun, sky or love come from? 
2) The "pooh-pooh" hypothesis holds that the first words came from involuntary exclamations of dislike, hunger, pain, or pleasure, eventually leading to the expression of more developed ideas and emotions.  In this case the first word would have been an involuntary ha-ha-ha, wa-wa-wa These began to be used to name the actions which caused these sounds.
      The problem with this hypothesis is that, once again, emotional exclamations are a very small part of any language.  They are also highly language specific. For instance, to express sudden pain or discomfort: Eng. ouch; Russ. oi.;  Cherokee eee.  Thus, exclamations are more like other words in that they reflect the phonology of each separate language.  Unlike sneezes, tears, hiccoughs or laughter, which are innate human responses to stimuli, the form of exclamations depends on language rather than precedes language.  Also, exclamations, like most other words are symbols, showing at least a partially arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning.
3) The "bow-wow" hypothesis (the most famous and therefore the most ridiculed hypothesis) holds that vocabulary developed from imitations of animal noises, such as: Moo, bark, hiss, meow, quack-quack.  In other words, the first human words were a type of index, a sign whose form is naturally connected with its meaning in time and space. 
      But, once again, onomotopoeia is a limited part of the vocabulary of any language. The linguistic renditions of animal sounds differ considerably from language to language, although each species of animal everywhere makes essentially the same sound:

a) Dog:bow-wow; Chinese:wu-wu; Jap.wan-wan Russ gaf-gaf, tyaff-tyaff;
b) Cat-meow, Russ.myaoo, Chin--mao, Jap.nya-nya  purr in French is ron ron.
c) Pig: oink-oink; Russ. hryu-hryu;  Chin.--oh-ee-oh-ee;  Jap. bu-bu.
d) Russian rooster: kukareiku.  Japanese kokekoko
e) Russian owl:ukh; Cherokee goo-ku  Spanish, Japanese-- no special word

Thus, the human interpretation of animal sounds is dependent upon the individual language, and it seems unlikely than entire vocabularies derived from them.
4) A somewhat different hypothesis is the "ta-ta" hypothesis.  Charles Darwin hypothesized (though he himself was sceptical about his own hypothesis) that speech may have developed as a sort of mouth pantomime: the organs of speech were used to imitate the gestures of the hand.  In other words, language developed from gestures that began to be imitated by the organs of speech--the first words were lip icons of hand gestures. 
      It is very possible that human language, which today is mostly verbal, had its origin in some system of gestures; other primates rely on gesture as an integral part of communication, so it is plausible that human communication began in the same way.  Human gestures, however, just like onomotopoeic words, differ from culture to culture.  Cf. English crossing the finger for good luck vs. Russian "fig" gesture; nodding for yes vs. for no in Turkish and Bulgarian; knocking on wood vs. spitting over the left shoulder three times.
      A second set of hypotheses on language origin holds that language began as a response to some acute necessity in the community.  Here are several necessity hypotheses of the invention of language:

1) Warning hypothesis.  Language may have evolved from warning signals such as those used by animals.  Perhaps language started with a warning to others, such as Look out, Run, or Help to alert members of the tribe when some lumbering beast was approaching.  Other first words could have been hunting instructions or instructions connected with other work. In other words, the first words were indexes used during everyday activities and situations.
2) The "yo-he-ho" hypothesis.  Language developed on the basis of human cooperative efforts. 
      The earliest language was chanting to simulate collective effort, whether moving great stones to block off cave entrances from roving carnivores or repeating warlike phrases to inflame the fighting spirit. 
      It is fairly certain that the first poetry and song came from this aspect of beginning speech.  Songs of this type are still with us: Volga boatmen, military marching chants, seven dwarfs working song.  
      Plato also believed that language developed out of sheer practical necessity.  And Modern English has the saying: Necessity is the mother of invention.           Speech and right hand coordination are both controlled in the left hemisphere of the brain.  Could this be a possible clue that manual dexterity and the need to communicate developed in unison? 
3) A more colorful idea is the lying hypothesis.  E. H. Sturtevant argued that, since all real intentions or emotions get involuntarily expressed by gesture, look or sound, voluntary communication must have been invented for the purpose of lying or deceiving.  He proposed that the need to deceive and lie--to use language in contrast to reality for selfish ends-- was the social prompting that got language started. 

      There are no scientific tests to evaluate between these competing hypotheses.  All of them seem equally far-fetched.  This is why in the late 19th century the Royal Linguistic Society in London actually banned discussion and debate on the origin of language out of fear that none of the arguments had any scientific basis at all and that time would be needlessly wasted on this fruitless enquiry.  Attempts to explain the origin of language are usually taken no more seriously today either.  Recently, commedian Lily Tomlin came up with her own language invention hypothesis: she claimed that men invented language so that they could complain. 
        Each of the imitation hypotheses might explain how certain isolated words of language developed.  Very few words in human language are verbal icons.  Most are symbols, displaying an arbitrary relationship of sound and meaning. (Example: the word tree in several languages: Spanish árbol; French arbre; Slovak strom; Georgian he; Ket oks; Estonian puu; German Baum; Russian derevo; Latvian koks; Hawaiian lä'au)
      And each of the necessity hypotheses might explain how involuntary sounds made out of need in certain contexts might have come to be manipulated as words for an object even out of context.  However, the extended use of natural indexes still leaves unexplained the development of grammar--the patterns in language which have definite structural functions but no specific meaning. The creative, generative aspect of human language that we call grammar is language's most unique feature.  Where did grammar come from? There is nothing like grammar (patterns with definite functions yet no set meaning) in animal systems of communication.
      In isolated instances it can be shown that a grammatical pattern developed from chance lexical combinations:

a) suffix -hood from OE word haeda= state.  childhood, boyhood, puppyhood. 
b) Continuous action: form of verb to be + main verb comes from a locative phrase I am working > I am at working-- cf. the song I'm a working on the railroad. 

But these are isolated instances.  How language developed a complex grammar remains a complete mystery.  This means that how language developed is equally a mystery.  We simply don't know how language may have actually evolved from simple animal systems of sounds and gestures.

Hypotheses regarding Language Diversity

      Regardless of whether language was a special gift from the gods, a natural evolutionary acquisition, or an ingenious, conscious human invention made at some specific moment in our species' distant past, the fact remains that language does exist.  And since so many languages exist today, a second question arises: Was there one or more than one original language? Was there one or more than one invention of language?  There are about 5,000 languages spoken on Earth today.  We know that there were even more spoken in the past, when most people lived in small bands or tribes rather than in large states.
      There are two age-old beliefs regarding the origin or the world's present linguistic diversity.
1) The oldest belief is that there was a single, original language.  The idea of a single ancestor tongue is known today as monogenesis.  In Judeo-Christian tradition, the original language was confused by divine intervention, as described in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. There is a similar story from the Toltecs of pre-Columbian Mexico, who tell of the building of the great pyramid at Cholula, and the dispersal of the builders by an angry god.  And similar stories are found in other parts of the world. 
      It may be interesting to note here that people who believe in a single origin for language have different hypotheses as to what that first language may have been. 
      a) A Basque scholar claimed that the first language was Basque.
      b) A German philologist of the last century maintained that German was the first language and that all other languages are inferior corruptions of it. Other European linguists conferred the same exalted status on Greek or Sanskrit. 
      c) One Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish and the serpent spoke French.
2) There is a second hypothesis of human origin and, consequently, of the origin of human language: the hypothesis of parallel evolution.  This hypothesis holds that, as humans evolved parallel in more than one location; each group developed its own unique language.  The hypothesis of the multiple origin of humankind is sometimes called the Candelabra theory.  The candelabra hypothesis tends to be favored in East Asia and by a smaller number of scientists in the West.  The hypothesis of multiple linguistic origins that often goes along with this hypothesis is known as polygenesis.  Each of the original languages then would then have diverged into numerous forms.  The major language families of today would be descended from these separate mother tongues.
3) Scientific monogenesis: The Mother Tongue theory.
      Theories of monogenesis do not necessarily derive from religious belief. Many modern scholars believe in a theory of monogenesis that has come to be called the Mother Tongue Theory. This theory holds that one original language spoken by a single group of Homo sapiens perhaps as early as 150 thousand years ago gave rise to all human languages spoken on the Earth today. As humans colonized various continents, this original mother tongue diverged through time to form the numerous languages spoken today.  Since many scientists believe that the first fully modern humans appeared in Africa, the mother tongue theory is connected with a more general theory of human origin known as the Out of Africa theory. Currently, the theory of evolutionary monogenesis tends to be favored by a group of linguists working in the United States.
      Regardless of the origin of language, the fact remains that there are over 5,000 mutually unintelligible forms of human speech used on Earth today. And, although many are radically different from one another in structure--the differences are superficial since each and every one of these languages can be used creatively.
      Languages do not differ in terms of their creative potential but rather in terms of the level upon which particular distinctions are realized in each particular language. What is expressed concisely in one language requires a phrase in another language. (Examples of aspect and evidentiality; also words like Swahili mumagamagama "a person who habitually loses things" and Russian zajchik "the rainbow reflection from glass." Linguists study how each particular language structures the expression of concepts. Such cross-language comparisons fall under a branch of linguistics called language typology.
      If the structural diversity of human languages is superficial, then why in language typology important? Why do so many linguists spend so much time studying language diversity?
      1) First, to try to trace the original mother tongue (or mother tongues). Linguists who compare modern languages try to reconstruct ancient languages are called comparative linguists.
      2) Second, because languages change more slowly than the environment in which they are spoken, languages contain all sorts of indications of bygone culture. For historians and anthropologists, language provides a special window into the past: ursus/bear/ medved;  time/tide/vremya.  Study a language--any language--and you will learn much about the history of the people who speak that language. You will also be taking a crucial step toward understanding the contemporary culture of the speakers.  Linguists who study language from this cultural standpoint are called anthropological linguists.          
      Remember that--contrary to the hypothesis of linguistic determinism--studying a language will not help you predict the future for the people who speak that language. The future will happen with little regard for language structure, and language will be shaped by that future, not the other way around.
      And this is why will we spend the next four weeks studying the morphology, syntax and phonology of diverse languages. And during the second half of the course we will return to questions of language in society and the connection between language and the brain.

About Professor Vajda

Edward Vajda is a professor in Western Washington University's Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He received his degrees from Indiana University and the University of Washington, and has also studied at Moscow State University. He has been on Western's faculty since 1987. He teaches Russian language, culture and history, as well as general linguistics and Inner Asian and Siberian peoples. He is currently serving as director of the Center for East Asian Studies and also as the Associate Director of the Center for International Studies. He also serves as an editor of the New York-based linguistics journal "Word" . Fluent in several languages, he has authored six books, dozens of articles and hundreds of reviews (see his CV for more information). Dr. Vajda is interested in documenting endangered languages of Siberia and has conducted original fieldwork with Ket, a language spoken by fewer than 100 people in the remote Yenisei River basin. In August 2008 he became the first North American to live and work with the Ket in their Sub-Arctic homeland. He is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany), where in August 2006 he presented evidence supporting a genetic connection between Ket and the Athabaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit (Na-Dene) language family of North America. In February 2008 he presented more evidence at a symposium in Fairbanks, Alaska. The "Dene-Yeniseian Hypothesis" is gaining acceptance as the first demonstrated link between an Old World and a New World language family. Vajda received Western's Excellence in Teaching Award in 1992.

 http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/about.htm

interesting article - The Origins of Language

The Origins of Language Dr. C. George Boeree

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It is an intriguing question, to which we may never have a complete answer:  How did we get from animal vocalization (barks, howls, calls...) to human language?
Animals often make use of signs, which point to what they represent, but they don’t use symbols, which are arbitrary and conventional.  Examples of signs include sniffles as a sign of an on-coming cold, clouds as a sign of rain, or a scent as a sign of territory.  Symbols include things like the words we use.  Dog, Hund, chien, cane, perro -- these are symbols that refer to the creature so named, yet each one contains nothing in it that in anyway indicates that creature.
In addition, language is a system of symbols, with several levels of organization, at least phonetics (the sounds), syntax (the grammar), and semantics (the meanings).
So when did language begin?  At the very beginnings of the genus Homo, perhaps 4 or 5 million years ago?  Or with the advent of modern man, Cro-magnon, some 125,000 years ago?  Did the neanderthal speak?  He had a brain that was larger than ours, but his voice box seems to be higher in his throat, like that of the apes.  We don’t know.
There are many theories about the origins of language.  Many of these have traditional amusing names (invented by Max Müller and George Romanes a century ago), and I will create a couple more where needed.
1. The mama theory.  Language began with the easiest syllables attached to the most significant objects.
2.  The ta-ta theory.  Sir Richard Paget, influenced by Darwin, believed that body movement preceded language.  Language began as an unconscious vocal imitation of these movements -- like the way a child’s mouth will move when they use scissors, or my tongue sticks out when I try to play the guitar.  This evolved into the popular idea that language may have derived from gestures.

3.  The bow-wow theory.  Language began as imitations of natural sounds -- moo, choo-choo, crash, clang, buzz, bang, meow...  This is more technically refered to as onomatopoeia or echoism.
4.  The pooh-pooh theory.  Language began with interjections, instinctive emotive cries such as oh! for surprise and ouch! for pain.
5.  The ding-dong theory.  Some people, including the famous linguist Max Muller, have pointed out that there is a rather mysterious correspondence between sounds and meanings.  Small, sharp, high things tend to have words with high front vowels in many languages, while big, round, low things tend to have round back vowels!  Compare itsy bitsy teeny weeny with moon, for example.  This is often referred to as sound symbolism.
6.  The yo-he-ho theory.  Language began as rhythmic chants, perhaps ultimately from the grunts of heavy work (heave-ho!).  The linguist A. S. Diamond suggests that these were perhaps calls for assistance or cooperation accompanied by appropriate gestures.  This may relate yo-he-ho to the ding-dong theory, as in such words as cut, break, crush, strike...
7.  The sing-song theory.  Danish linguist Jesperson suggested that language comes out of play, laughter, cooing, courtship, emotional mutterings and the like.  He even suggests that, contrary to other theories, perhaps some of our first words were actually long and musical, rather than the short grunts many assume we started with.
8.  The hey you! theory.  A linguist by the name of Revesz suggested that we have always needed interpersonal contact, and that language began as sounds to signal both identity (here I am!) and belonging (I’m with you!).  We may also cry out in fear, anger, or hurt (help me!).  This is more commonly called the contact theory.
9.  The hocus pocus theory.  My own contribution to these is the idea that language may have had some roots in a sort of magical or religious aspect of our ancestors' lives.  Perhaps we began by calling out to game animals with magical sounds, which became their names.
10.  The eureka! theory.  And finally, perhaps language was consciously invented.  Perhaps some ancestor had the idea of assigning arbitrary sounds to mean certain things.  Clearly, once the idea was had, it would catch on like wild-fire!
Another issue is how often language came into being (or was invented).  Perhaps it was invented once, by our earliest ancestors -- perhaps the first who had whatever genetic and physiological properties needed to make complex sounds and organize them into strings.  This is called monogenesis.  Or perhaps it was invented many times -- polygenesis -- by many people.
We can try to reconstruct earlier forms of language, but we can only go so far before cycles of change obliterate any possibility of reconstruction.  Many say we can only go back perhaps 10,000 years before the trail goes cold.  So perhaps we will simply never know.

Perhaps the biggest debate among linguists and others interested in the origins of language is whether we can account for language using only the basic mechanisms of learning, or if we need to postulate some special built-in language-readiness.  The learning-only people (for example, B. F. Skinner) say that childhood conditioning, or maybe modeling, can account for the complexity of language.  The language-acquisition-device (LAD) people (such as Chomsky and Pinker) say that the ease and speed with which children learn language requires something more.

The debate is real only for those people who prefer to take one or the other of these extreme views.  It seems very clear to most that neither is the answer.  Is there some special neural mechanism for language?  Not in the sense of a LAD.

In most mammals, both hemispheres looked very much alike.  Somewhere in humanity's early years, a few people possibly inherited a mutation that left one hemisphere with a limited capacity.  Instead of neural connections going in every direction, they tended to be organized more linearly. The left hemisphere couldn't related to things in the usual full-blown multidimensional way.  But -- surprise! -- that same diminished capacity proved to be very good are ordering things linearly.  And that's exactly what language needs:  The ability to convert fully dimensional events into linear sequences of sounds, and vice versa.