FOXP2

Very different outcomes, and those differences lined up almost perfectly with who carried a particular genetic variant.

Follow that clue, and you land on a gene called FOXP2.

It became famous almost overnight as the language gene.

Headlines loved it.

A single switch that turned language on or off.

A magic key that made us human.

But FOXP2 is not a language gene in any simple sense.

It's more like a project manager for a whole team of genes involved in brain development, motor control and learning.

I, And a few of those we know for sure.

And in that paper, how one tribe conquered the world 70,000 years ago, I have a graph of probably 20 different genes, genes that regulate neurogenesis, formation of new neurons, genes that, well, regulated many other things like FOXP2, for example, and genes that directly regulate the time course of brain development.

And usually in animals, the goal is to develop as fast as possible, because like a horse, a horse is born, it can walk in a minute after birth, right? Humans are born and they cannot crawl for another year.

So in most animals, the goal was to reduce childhood as much as possible.

Yes.

Plus, scientists discovered a special piece of DNA called the FOXP2 gene.

The FOXP2 gene? That sounds like a cool robot.

It's actually known as the language gene.

It helps control the fine movements of our mouths and lips so we can form complex words.

How do they communicate with it? Great job.

Let's see how you did.

The first answer is it is called the FOXP2 gene.