Why do we guffaw or weep, chortle or bawl?
Laughter and tears don’t just show emotion; they’re forms of communication. And these signs of joy or grief may have developed along with our capacity for empathy and a …
Category: language evolution (page 3 of 4)
Could language have evolved from birdsong?
A new paper suggests that human language shares features with both the tweeting of our feathered friends, and the buzzing of bees. How might early humans have combined them to make language?
Linguist Daniel …
How did language start?
It’s a difficult question, since language doesn’t leave fossils. But by getting experimental volunteers to act out concepts, Dr Nicolas Fay is building evidence for one of the major views on language origins. What can we …
Apes don’t have language, but they do gesture.
They’ve even been observed using a special form of gesture with their young. Could it be primate baby-talk? What can we learn from our nearest relatives about how our language started?
Linguist …
Archaeologists have found the oldest known art from our early ancestors.
These carvings are thousands of years older than the earliest cave paintings — also in southern France. Who carved them, and why? And what’s the link between art and …
New evidence shows that humans used fire one million years ago — a lot earlier than we thought.
This tells us about our early ancestors, but it also tells us about language and how it started. What does fire have …
Radioactive waste takes a long time to decay.
In the meantime, you have to warn people to stay away from it. But how do you make a warning sign that will still be understandable to people 10,000 years in the …
What was early human language like?
A pair of researchers think they’ve reconstructed early human syntax from as early as 50,000 years ago. But have they got it right? How can we know about languages that no longer exist?
Linguist …
Recent work in genetics has revealed that all non-African people are related to Neanderthals, a now-extinct species of human.
If there was interbreeding between us, how would they have communicated? Did Neanderthals have language, and what might it have been …
A new study has revealed some promising insights on the origins of human language.
It now appears that language began in Africa, and it may even have helped our ancestors make the move to other parts of the world. But …
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