Research: We can say F words because our ancestors stopped eating raw meat

In this June 30, 2014, file photo, a farmer, left, ritualistically offers a small portion of food to God before eating her lunch while working at a rice field in Chunnikhel, Katmandu, Nepal. (AP file photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
In this June 30, 2014, file photo, a farmer, left, ritualistically offers a small portion of food to God before eating her lunch while working at a rice field in Chunnikhel, Katmandu, Nepal. (AP file photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Languages evolve as societies develop and change, but the sounds humans utter are also shaped, literally, by the placement of the jaw — and that is influenced by how we chew our food, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.

Language study often focuses on cultural factors, "but our work shows that language is also a biological phenomenon -- you can't fully separate culture and biology," said Balthasar Bickel, a linguist at the University of Zurich and co-author of the new study.

The researchers analyzed Stone Age and modern skulls and created simulations of how different jaw placements allow mouths to make different sounds. They analyzed a database of roughly 2,000 languages — more than a quarter of those in existence — to identify which sounds were more and less frequently used, and where.

The finding suggests the way most of us speak is shaped in part by how long ago our ancestors gave up chewing tough, raw meat. Languages spoken by groups with hunter-gatherer societies in their more recent past are far less likely to use consonants used by longtime farming societies, the study found.

"Our anatomy actually changed the types of sounds being incorporated into languages," Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Buffalo who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

Before societies cultivated crops and learned to cook, early humans chewed raw meat — which was hard work. Stone Age adult skulls don't look like modern skulls. These older skulls have upper and lower teeth closing directly on top of one another — whereas today most people have some degree of overbite, with the front teeth extending in front of bottom teeth when the mouth is closed.

This Jan. 8, 2003 file photo shows a reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton with the jaw alignment new research says was an effect of eating tough, raw meat. (AP File Photo/Frank Franklin II)
This Jan. 8, 2003 file photo shows a reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton with the jaw alignment new research says was an effect of eating tough, raw meat. (AP File Photo/Frank Franklin II)

"If you are raised on softer foods, you don't have the same kind of wear and tear on your bite that your ancestors had, so you keep an overbite," Bickel said.

Eating softer foods not only sets the jaw in a different fashion, but also changes which sounds are easily pronounced. In particular, it becomes much easier to say "f" and "v," which linguists call "labiodental" sounds.

(Align your upper incisors — or "front teeth" — directly over your lowers and try to say "favor.")

The researchers looked closely at 52 languages from the Indo-European language group and charted how the "f" and "v" sounds appeared in a rising number over time. As more societies developed agriculture and traded in raw meat for softer fare these sounds became more common, the researchers found.

The notion that agriculture shaped language was first suggested decades ago by American linguist Charles Hockett, but he did not attempt to prove it.

Style on 03/18/2019

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