Editing Hadza language (section)

==Speculations about early human language==
In 2003 the press widely reported suggestions by Alec Knight and Joanna Mountain of [[Stanford University]] that the original human language may have had clicks. The purported evidence for this is genetic: speakers of [[Juǀʼhoan dialect|Juǀʼhoan]] and Hadza have the most divergent known [[mitochondrial DNA]] of any human populations, suggesting that they were the first, or at least among the first, surviving peoples to have split off the family tree. In other words, the three primary genetic divisions of humanity are the Hadza, the Juǀʼhoan and relatives, and everyone else. Because two of the three groups speak languages with clicks, perhaps their common ancestral language, which by implication is the ancestral language for all humankind, had clicks as well.

However, besides the genetic interpretation, this conclusion rests on several unsupported assumptions: 
* Both groups have kept their languages, without [[language shift]], since they branched off from the rest of humanity;
* Neither group borrowed clicks as part of a [[sprachbund]], as the Bantu [[Nguni languages]] (Zulu, Xhosa etc.) and [[Yeyi language|Yeyi]] did; and
* Neither the ancestors of the Juǀʼhoan nor those of the Hadza developed clicks independently, as the creators of [[Damin]] did.

There is no evidence that any of these assumptions are correct, or even likely. Linguistic opinion is that click consonants may well be a relatively late development in human language, that they are no more resistant to change or any more likely to be linguistic relics than other speech sounds, and that they are easily borrowed: at least one Khoisan language, [[ǁXegwi language|ǁXegwi]], is believed to have reborrowed clicks from Bantu languages, which had earlier borrowed them from Khoisan languages, for example. The Knight and Mountain article is the latest in a long line of speculations about the primitive origin of click consonants, which have been largely motivated by the outdated idea that primitive people speak primitive languages, which has no empirical support.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Sands|Güldemann|2009}}</ref>