By Dan Falk, a science journalist based in Toronto and a senior contributor to Undark. His books include “The Science of Shakespeare” and “In Search of Time.” Originally published at Undark.
According to Guinness World Records, the world’s fastest talker is one Sean Shannon, capable of unleashing a staggering 665 English words per minute (that’s 11 words per second). But even those of us with average tongues seem to chatter incessantly. (Usually with our fellow humans, but we carry on even when they’re not around: When Tom Hanks’ character is stuck on an uninhabited island for four years in the 2000 film “Cast Away,” he talks not only to himself but also to a volleyball.)
There’s no question that we love to talk — but how did it happen? Yes, humpback whales sing, vervet monkeys use alarm calls, and bees convey information about food sources through dance, but only humans have full-blown language. Steven Mithen, a professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, would seem to be well positioned to find the answer. His new book, “The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved,” is hardly the first to explore the issue — but it is perhaps the most thorough to date. Drawing on the latest findings from an array of fields, including linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and genetics, Mithen guides the reader through some 1.6 million years of hominin evolution, from language’s earliest stirrings to the rich communication system it became for Homo sapiens.
Many elements from this timeline are difficult if not impossible to pin down; after all, words do not fossilize, and we only started writing things down around 5,000 years ago — after our species had been communicating verbally for several hundred thousand years. (Mithen puts the dawn of what he calls “fully modern language” at about 40,000 years ago.)
Still, there are some numbers we can guess at with a measure of confidence. For example, since no other species — not even our closest living relatives, chimpanzees — uses a sophisticated form of language comparable to that of humans, it’s reasonable to presume that whatever triggered the rise of linguistic capability in our own lineage must have happened after humans and chimps diverged, around 6 million years ago.
A comparison with chimps and other apes is useful, and Mithen devotes a full chapter to the subject. Chimps certainly vocalize, but Mithen says the sounds they make are not words (though he allows that they have “word-like qualities”). While there are distinct anatomical differences between humans and chimps that hamper the latter’s ability to produce nuanced speech, Mithen notes that the fundamental obstacle to chimp language is cognitive.
For starters, there’s little evidence that chimps think about what other chimps are thinking — psychologists refer to this as having “theory of mind” (a skill that human children develop by around age 4). Confronted with this limitation, chimps never developed the linguistic abilities that would allow them to plan cooperative activities, to work toward collective goals the way humans do. At some point, our own ancestors did make this leap — and the repercussions were enormous.
As an example, Mithen asks us to consider the cognitive abilities needed to coordinate a group hunt. To talk about chasing and killing an antelope, he writes, at the very least you would need to have some way to refer to an antelope even when no antelopes are within sight. (Mithen calls this skill “displacement” — the ability to talk about things not in one’s immediate view, which is essential for describing the future and the past.) We have that ability; earlier hominins may have had it to a more modest degree. Chimps do not have it. Even so, Mithen suggests it may just be a “small cognitive shift” that separates a chimp’s abilities from our own.
What might our first words have been? Mithen highlights the difference between “arbitrary” and “iconic” words: The former are more common; they’re words whose sound has no connection to the thing they stand for. (For example, there’s no connection between the English word “dog” and an actual dog, nor is there such a connection in any other language.) In contrast, iconic words (also known as sound-symbolic words) do carry a connection to the thing they represent. Onomatopoeias are the best-known examples — think of “bang” or “quack” — but an iconic word might also point to its target via the latter’s sound, size, shape, movement, or texture. Mithen believes that iconic words played a key role in the evolution of language, bridging the “barks and grunts” of our chimpanzee-like ancestors with modern language.
While comparisons between humans and chimps are intriguing, the linguistic differences between us and our fellow hominins — especially the recent ones — are even more interesting. In some parts of the Europe and Western Asia, Homo sapiens and their close cousins, the Neanderthals, shared the same environment and even interbred. But, even though the Neanderthals’ reputation has received something of a boost in recent years, Mithen stresses that they were not our equals. For one thing, they appear to have hardly innovated at all: He points out that while human tool use changed significantly over time, Neanderthals continued to use the same kinds of stone tools for some 300,000 years.
How much of this disparity comes down to the presence or absence of language? Mithen suggests that, while Neanderthals could perhaps discuss the here-and-now, they had little or no capacity for abstraction. They probably lacked metaphor. In contrast, early human language was much more fluid. Our ancestors could compare A to B even if no examples of either were within sight. We could talk about ideas just as easily as objects.
Mithen is deeply curious about the degree to which early human speech may have differed from that of the Neanderthals. Today we habitually compare things to other things; we describe space in terms of time (“the store is five minutes away”) and time in terms of space (“a 30-minute layover is too close for comfort”). Imagining how our ancestors made the first forays into this kind of language use, Mithen paints the following picture: “With cognitive fluidity, a Homo sapiens mother could describe her daughter as being as brave as a lion, while believing that lions had human-like thoughts and desires; time could be described as space; and space by words derived from the human body.”
While the ability to master metaphorical language has obvious uses, Mithen points to another development that may have come about at around the same time, whose connection to metaphor may be less than obvious: humor. “Puns, double entendres and innuendos, all reliant on metaphor and the verbal fluency of the modern mind, now pervaded language,” he writes. “These gave modern humans a joy of words that remained absent among the domain-specific Neanderthals. Homo sapiens laughed their way into modernity.”
Many questions lurk in the background. Does the way we talk influence the way we think? Or might language be an essential ingredient of consciousness itself? Mithen speculates on a possible connection between our inner voice and consciousness, but does so cautiously. “Our silently spoken words might bring our concepts to consciousness, such that inner speech itself can be considered a type of thought,” he writes — but he also notes that most of the thinking that we do occurs wordlessly.
Readers who regularly devour these sorts of books will find many familiar elements. In some sense, “The Language Puzzle” is a history of Homo sapiens, so there’s inevitably some overlap with species-explaining books like Yuval Noah Harari’s bestseller “Sapiens” or Leonard Mlodinow’s “The Upright Thinkers.” But a story so vital can bear more than one telling, and Mithen’s laser-like focus on the issue of communication and language sets his story apart.
There are plenty of surprises along the way, especially in the details. For example, Mithen points out that, in English, there’s a whole set of words relating to “unhurried movement” that are similar to one another, all of them starting with “sl” – he points to slow, slide, slur, slouch, and slime. In each case, he writes, “the movement of the tongue over the palette to make sl- captures the essense of those words — we can only describe the tongue as moving slowly and sliding.”
As our species developed its language skills, “we became entirely dependent on words for every aspect of our lives,” Mithen writes. “To maintain such dependency, evolution not only gave us the joy of words but made language the life force of being human.” Mithen’s book is engaging, detailed, and incredibly thorough — and brings a fresh and welcome perspective to a longstanding puzzle.
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much like Sapiens, this book just seems like a collation of already existing ideas. ex. the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By, etc…
sort of convenient to have it all in one place but unless the author is citing these sources it seems a bit disingenous, like Harari.
Never really thought about it but the development of a speaking language must have given our ancestors one hell of a competitive edge. With it, they could explain to each other and the young hunting tactics and techniques, which plants were edible and how to prepare them, how atmospheric conditions would play out in actual weather conditions, how to prepare hides and to use them to construct huts. Chimps for example can do none of that. And I would imagine around campfires there would be the swapping of stories and how that monster fish got away from a fisherman. And maybe with each generation more words would be added to their vocabulary and maybe common words be more sharply defined.
My favorite line in this review is “since no other species — not even our closest living relatives, chimpanzees — uses a sophisticated form of language comparable to that of humans,” Hmm, that’s good to know. Pass the hubris please /s
thank you for pointing that out – hubris indeed!
“The Language Puzzle”, another book I will try to get from my local library!
Me wandering along the River Maeander: How fortunate we are when we have a mother or other caregiver who talks to us from babyhood. My mother loved to explain what was going on in the world around me, telling me the names of various things. This was especially true when she took me out into the big world: “That is a truck” or “This is a chipmunk”. (I would call it a “mee-munk”, the ‘m’ sound probably easier for a child to use than the ‘ch’ sound.) She taught me the joy of words. She loved a pun and double-entendre.
Years later, when I rode the bus on a daily basis, it saddened me to see little children excited about the world outside the bus and trying to engage their mothers in some kind of conversation, only to have the mothers ignore them. They were probably very tired mothers. Still, it was a lost opportunity for the children to learn new words.
Chomsky believes…and he is obviously right….that language was developed in order to think…not communicate. THINK about it.
Can you imagine if this got out…
Everyone would want to become as literate as humanly possible. But we couldn’t have that.
It’s a fascinating subject. Especially as one gets older and words don’t come as quickly or not at all.
yeah, i urge people to check out this relatively recent book by him: Why Only Us
we definitely use language to communicate, but we also use it for many other things, kinda like how our spine keeps us upright, protects the spinal cord, etc. But as Chomsky and others have argued, communication seems like something we do ‘with it’, and in a pretty fallible manner..
Imagine taking apart a bicycle. Does it require language to think of it?
I’m also up to here with slagging off on the Neandertals. We actually know very little about the other human species who shared this space with us and went extinct. We do know that Neandertals made art. I see other animals doing things that sometimes look like art (cuckoo nests) but we don’t “talk” about it in that way.
“I see other animals doing things that sometimes look like art (cuckoo nests)…”
Even more so, perhaps, bowerbirds.
“language was developed in order to think…not communicate”
Given that language is shaped and maintained by the verbal community in which one acquires language—and one doesn’t develop language in the absence of that community—I would question that proposition. It’s something that the reviewers of Chomsky and Berwick’s book, Why Only Us, in New Scientist, call “the unlikely implication of their logic.”
How do you think? In words? And when you visualize/imagine do you describe it to yourself in words? And how much of your day is spent communicating versus thinking ? It’s fun stuff.
“Given that language is shaped and maintained by the verbal community in which one acquires language—and one doesn’t develop language in the absence of that community—I would question that proposition.”
Maybe that community developed language to become a “Thinking” community.
IIRC he also says that there is nothing in evolutionary theory that explains the quantum leap we took into speech/language
The origin of language was what got me into the linguistics game in the first place. I was in for a surprise: nobody has the slightest idea how it happened nor any (ethical) idea how to find out. We see from extremely tragic and distinctly biased case studies that children raised without language can have significant, possibly even severe, cognitive impairment. Repeated observations have also shown that the more language a child is exposed to as an infant, and possibly even beforehand, correlates with improved educational outcomes. That pretty much sums up and oversimplifies the entire field of knowledge on the subject, but highlights that childhood language development is really our only avenue of investigation at this point.
The physical aspect of speech having something to do with its development is an interesting thought. Linguists do study the production of sounds (and there are a lot!) and how they correspond to words, but the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is as far out on a limb as they’re willing to go. Also, regarding the “silent speech” — well, there was a popular meme not too long ago about people who have no inner narrative nor the ability to picture an idea…
“origin of language”
One explanation is to be found in the “Coffin Cure” by Alan E. Nourse¹
* SPOILER *
Language and enhanced intelligence were just a way to compensate for an acquired handicap, here² diminished sense of smell caused by susceptibility to the Noro-Virus (sniffles)
¹ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24276/24276-h/24276-h.htm not suitable for fans of vaccination and commercial pharmaceutical research
² Other weaknesses might be contemplable
Julian Jaynes in his ‘Origins of Consciousness’ book has a theory of language intertwined with the causes of consciousness which he goes into detail in chapter three of Book II – he also proposes that writing came with language which was necessary for trade between communities – all leading to the breakdown of the bicameral mind – Chomsky’s ‘Reflections on Language’ & Lev Vygotsky’s ‘Thought and Language’ are also interesting in their perspective –
Hmm…
Haven’t known many chimps in my time but I wouldn’t say they have zero theory of mind, just a very rudimentary one. I’m thinking here of the various reports over the years of pet/rescue chimps attacking people or other chimps out of what can only be jealousy. Not the most noble of traits but one that implies a theory of mind as it entails identifying Party A’s preference for Party B over me.
Does the book actually get into what language is? Not sure “only humans have full blown language” is all that much of a boast if language is merely a form of communication, something that all life forms do. Would our form of language not be as unique to us as our, well, form?
I agree—whether or not, in the words of the post, chimps “think about what other chimps are thinking,” there is evidence that chimps (and other great apes) can take into account the perspective of another being. Given that chimpanzees live in complex social hierarchies, I would find it surprising if they didn’t have some “theory of mind.”
I just want to add an important discovery that sheds some light on these questions: deaf children in Nicaragua created their own sign language. Here’s the link:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/deaf-kids-establish-own-sign-language
This makes me question Chomsky’s idea that language was developed to think. Also, it indicates that language ability seems to be deeply hard-wired into our brains, which makes me question Mithen’s guess that fully modern language began just 40,000 years ago.
What a mess. Consciousness covers a wide variety of concepts so it seems like that passage could do with some unpacking.
To the extent that other animals are also conscious (i.e., “creature conscious”), language is obviously not an essential ingredient of consciousness. To the extent that people become aware of that behavior (i.e., that they are, in some sense, conscious), language plays a role. As BF Skinner said, close to four decades ago:
Inner speech can be considered “a type of thought”—again, Skinner, this time over 70 years ago, referred to that type of behavior as covert verbal behavior, so this is hardly groundbreaking stuff—but that occurs whether or not that behavior “bring[s] our concepts to consciousness.” We can say any number of random words to ourselves and those might not be particularly “conceptual.”
And, in fact, when “we can’t quite put our finger on it” or “we can’t put it into words,” we’re still conscious of well, something—we’re commenting on it, after all—we just can’t express it. And when we can express it, that’s another variant of consciousness. That’s not really “[o]ur silently spoken words…bring[ing] our concepts to consciousness.” We just describe that ability to express something as one form of consciousness.
Thanks for this.
The comparisons to chimps are absolutely interesting and amazing.
Chimps have short term memory, that humans can’t come close too. It’s seemingly, photographic.
Now what about plants? There is increasing evidence that plants communicate with each other in a sophisticated manner.
Cf The Light Eaters: The New Science of Plant Intelligence by Zöe Schlanger.
Maybe we have a problem with the definition of language if we limit it to how humans do it, and then announce triumphantly that we’re the only ones.
In English, yes – but off the top of my head there’s also ‘creep’, ‘crawl’, ‘sidle’, ‘inch’, ‘amble’, ‘drift’ and ‘wander’ for much the same thing. And if he’s suggesting these words were born initially from the use of the tongue to communicate a meaning via physical sensation rather than sound, do other languages all have ‘sl..’ words for moving slowly and sliding? If not, why not?
It’s also interesting to compare the huge library of speculations – and they are speculations – about what’s called evolution of language, really means evolution of the capacity for language – compare that with incomparably simpler topics like evolution of the communication system of bees – by any measure that’s a far simpler question but it’s barely studied in biology because it’s recognised to be too hard. On the other hand evolution of the language capacity, which is incomparably more difficult, not only because of the complexity but you don’t have fossil evidence and so on, that’s a huge topic. Actually a little bit is known about it, not very much. One thing that is known with considerable confidence is that in the past roughly 50 to 80,000 years, since humans left Africa, our ancestors left Africa, there’s been no evolution of the language capacity, it’s stayed identical, and there’s very strong evidence for that [..] [.. will continue to transcribe asap..] [..]
Nice juxtaposition with the Das piece on Israel – we’ve certainly put those language skills to good use!