Victoria Gill at the BBC:
Humans share elements of a common language with other apes, understanding many gestures that wild chimps and bonobos use to communicate.
That is the conclusion of a video-based study in which volunteers translated ape gestures.
It was carried out by researchers at St Andrews University.
It suggests the last common ancestor we shared with chimps used similar gestures, and that these may have been a “starting point” for our language.
The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.
More here.