DNA hints at origin of all language

From San Diego, at a meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics

Some tribes in Africa speak to each other with a vocabulary that includes sharp clicking sounds. Genetic comparison of two such tribes suggests that the unusual click languages, known as Khoisan languages, could resemble the ancestral tongue of all humankind.

For more than a century, linguists have debated the origins of these click languages, notes Alec Knight of Stanford University.