american scientists have found strong evidence to suggest various levels of gesticulations preceded human language as means of communication. A team at the Yerke Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia studied gesticulations, facial and vocal expressions of chimpanzees and their smalled cousins bonobos to establish levels of communication.

Lead researcher Amy Pollick told Down To Earth, "The fact that hand gesturing is universal in humans led us to suspect that there might be an evolutionary history to the behaviour. Also, we noticed that only apes and not monkeys gestured, suggesting that gesture might be more recent, evolutionarily, than other forms of communication.'

Their study focused on 13 bonobos divided in two groups and 34 chimpanzees in two groups. From these groups the researchers distinguished 31 manual gestures compared with only 18 facial and vocal communications. The researchers also found that bonobos showed greater flexibility in their use of gestures than the chimpanzees and were also the only species in which multimodal communication