The Origin of Language
How we learned to speak and why
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The Origin of Language
Narrated by:
Cat Gould
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Cat Gould
About this listen
Conventional explanations for how humans became ‘the language animal’ (proposed by men such as Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari) focus on our need to cooperate to hunt, fight or make tools. In this revolutionary new account, evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman locates a more convincing origin of language: the need to share childcare.
Through cutting-edge science, infused with sharp humour and insights into the history of biology and its luminaries, Beekman reveals the happy ‘accidents’ hidden in our molecular biology – our chromosomes, DNA and proteins – that led to one of the most fateful events in the history of life on Earth: humans giving birth to ‘underbaked’, highly dependent babies. To care for them, early human communities had to cooperate and coordinate, and it was this unprecedented need for communication that triggered the creation of human language – and changed everything.
Both enlightening and entertaining, The Origin of Language is a landmark publication by a brilliant biologist on how a culture of collaboration and care has shaped our existence from the very beginning.
Critic Reviews
‘Her theory, which she describes as having been hiding in plain sight, is compelling. [An] exciting idea ... a persuasive case for the role of alloparents in the evolution of language’
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