Our hands are actually the source of language... and a bunch of hand-waving primates agree.

Young children and apes learn to communicate through using gestures in a similar way, experts have found.

Psychologists analysed videos of a female chimpanzee, a female bonobo and a female human infant as part of the study to compare different types of gestures at comparable stages of communicative development and found “remarkable” similarities among the three species.

The chimpanzee and bonobo, formerly known as the pygmy chimpanzee, are the two species most closely related to humans.

Gestures made by all three species included reaching, pointing with fingers or the head, and raising the arms to ask to be picked up, with all three species found to be “predominantly communicative”.

To be classified as communicative, a gesture had to include eye contact and be accompanied by a vocal sound or include a visible effort to elicit a response, with the same standard used for all three species.

While speech began to dominate the communication of the child in the second half of the study, the two apes continued to rely predominantly on gesture

In all three species, gestures were usually accompanied by one or more signs of an intention to communicate, the study found.

Video analysis for the female child began at 11 months of age and continued until she was 18 months old. Meanwhile, videos studied of the two apes began when they were 12 months old and continued until they were 26 months old with an hour of footage analysed each month for all three.

While speech began to dominate the communication of the child in the second half of the study, the two apes continued to rely predominantly on gesture.

Overall, the findings support the “gestures first” theory of the evolution of language.

Patricia Greenfield, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and co-author of the study, said: “The similarity in the form and function of the gestures in a human infant, a baby chimpanzee and a baby bonobo was remarkable.”

The findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.