Behavioral experiments simulating language evolution have demonstrated how joint pressures of social interaction and cultural transmission can lead to the emergence of functional markers in an artificial sign language. Functional markers are signs that indicate person, location, instrument, or activity needed to discriminate between signs for chef, kitchen, frying pan, and cooking. To test whether there are differences in the brain response to signs from the earliest stage of simulated language evolution versus those that have undergone cultural evolution, we recorded EEG as participants learned hybrid versions of this sign language. Half of the signs each participant learned were from the initial stage of simulated language evolution while the remainder were from the final stage. Learners showed an early sensitivity to the signs from the initial stage, but after greater amounts of exposure, they had more mastery over final generation signs. Subsequent analyses linked early learning advantages to the iconicity of the signs, and the more subtle meaning discriminations were linked to the presence of functional markers. Results support the claim that cultural evolution leads to languages easily learned by the human brain.