1. The Experiment's Flawed Methodology:
* Unscientific Isolation: The experiment involved isolating two infants from any human contact and observing their spontaneous utterances. This ignores the fundamental need for language acquisition through social interaction and imitation. Infants need to learn language from their environment, not in isolation.
* Lack of Control: There was no control group to compare the infants' behavior to. We don't know if other infants raised in different environments would have produced different sounds.
* Subjective Interpretation: The "bekos" sound the infants supposedly uttered was likely just babbling. It's highly subjective to interpret meaningless sounds as representing a specific language.
2. The Concept of a Single "Original" Language:
* Linguistic Diversity: Languages are diverse and constantly evolving. It's improbable that a single language existed at the origin of human language.
* Evolutionary Nature of Language: Language likely developed gradually over thousands of years, with multiple branches and influences. It's impossible to pinpoint a single starting point.
3. The Mythical Narrative:
* Historical Accuracy: While Psammetichus was a real pharaoh, the story itself is likely a legend or an anecdote passed down through oral tradition. It lacks concrete historical evidence to support its accuracy.
Conclusion:
The story of Psammetichus is an interesting historical tale that reflects ancient ideas about language. However, it lacks any scientific basis and should not be taken as evidence for a single original language.
Modern linguistic research uses various methods to study language origins and development, including:
* Comparative linguistics: Comparing related languages to reconstruct their shared ancestor.
* Historical linguistics: Studying language change over time.
* Cognitive science: Exploring the cognitive processes involved in language.
* Archaeological evidence: Examining artifacts and inscriptions for clues about early languages.
While we may never know the precise origin of human language, these scientific methods offer a much more robust and accurate understanding of language evolution than the mythical story of Psammetichus.