> Yeah I think Unity just doesn't have the technical skillset anymore
It's not a technical skillset issue, it's a case of lacking resources, leadership changing priorities and changing requirements mid-development, causing a lot of work to be redone.
We still have highly skilled developers working in this area, if we can just actually be allowed to do (and keep) we work we have.
To answer that there are two main factors:
1) For this kind of single instance gene transfer to have an evolutionary effect, it will need to happens to germ-line cell (so an egg or sperm cell in a multi-cellular organism, or in a single-celled organism). Otherwise the mutation won't be inheritable and it won't be evolution, just mutation.
2) The organism(s) affected by this gene transfer would need to be under some evolutionary pressure that would benefit from extra genetic variance. Genetic variance in itself is not a driver of evolution, evolutionary pressure is, which does need the variance to actually do anything. Pressure is the sculptor and variance is the clay, without one of those there won't be a statue.
Also, normally most random mutations are either negative or neutral (there's a lot more ways an organism can be dead than alive), so I would suspect this might also be true of gene transfers. Though gene transfers from environmental DNA isn't as random as direct genetic mutation, so perhaps there's something interesting happening there. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the risk of cancer or viral infections would be higher.
It's also worth taking the "Life/dinner principle"[0] into account. If the termites fail to detect the beetle, then they might loose a tiny bit of food or whatever. While if the beetle fails to deceive the termites it might get killed or starve. Hence the adaptive pressure is probably higher for the beetle than for the termites.
0: The name comes from the example: the rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for its life, while the fox is running for its dinner.
The life/dinner principle doesn't work in absolutes, it just states that you would expect asymmetric evolutionary pressures from asymmetric stakes in interactions.
Well, the question is in reality either unanswerable (we don't know - and may never know - how many and when the first proto-language(s) emerged) or meaningless (all live natural languages go back as far as we can reconstruct or attest to).
I have started to plan some earth mounds. I keep walking over the same ground contemplating the optimal setting. Once I figured that out it occurred to me that it would be fun to make them 3 sizes small, medium, and large.
The idea has evolved to the point where I'm now estimating quantity of stones and relative size based on seating capacity of the mound.
I won't it even get in to site the entrances towards the east...
My point, I think is that a simple tweaks to earth mound can evolve a complex language by using similar shaped river stones at different scales.
The final result of the first phase will 7 mounds of 3 sizes and one large elevated platform. I realized doing planing the easiest way to communicate my idea to landscapers was to find a stone of each size to use a reference. I could then describe how many of which type go where. before covering with earth.
Once they are done we start to mark celestial events with special stones from far away places to mark the significance...
Just as a little correction: Dutch is not an "evolved German dialect". German and Dutch are both West Germanic languages, but so is Scots, Frisian and English. So it would be like saying that German is an evolved English dialect then (though to be fair, Dutch and German are grouped closer to each-other in that family tree usually and have provided a lot of substrate for each-other due to close contact).
Swiss German is not regarded as a its own language by any nation, though from a purely linguistic perspective it could very well be classified as its own language. What is deemed a language vs. a dialect usually comes down to politics. The saying usually goes something like: "A language is just a dialect with an army".
If we go a few hundred years or so it would’ve been considered a language as much as any other German “dialect”. But somebody decided to pick another dialect to be the “standard German” language.
Same applies to France and Italy. Especially when some northern Italian “dialect” are actually more closely related to “French” and some southern “French” ones to Catalan.
Just like for instance Dutch interestingly enough is closer to Franconian than to Frisian.
I saw a a neat video recently that mapped the spread of language through Germany as a gradient, with each successive wave being understood by their neighbours but people at opposite ends of the spectrum having difficulty. Then national boundaries cut right through that.
A similar process is currently ongoing in some English dialects with initial t/d. "Tuesday" and "choose day" are homophones for some British speakers. It may well morph into "shoes jay" within another century or two. Or not. Sound changes tend to follow patterns but they are not really predictable.
It's not a technical skillset issue, it's a case of lacking resources, leadership changing priorities and changing requirements mid-development, causing a lot of work to be redone.
We still have highly skilled developers working in this area, if we can just actually be allowed to do (and keep) we work we have.