Number of words: 479

Language offers a way to take the thoughts of one person, encode them, and insert them into the minds of others. We can achieve that remarkable feat of thought transference without the pain, drilling, and bloodshed of trepanning. If someone has a great idea, it can spread instantly and does not have to wait for fission, sex, or infection to propagate its influence down the generations. With the emergence of Homo sapiens, units of spoken and mental information now began their own strategies for selfish proliferation and cooperation. It was William Burroughs, the opiate-fueled writer, who memorably suggested that language itself might be a virus, manipulating us for its own purposes. This virus has led to the dramatic increase in the speed of change on the planet, for better or for worse.

Language became a spur for evolution. Those who had brains that were most receptive to these new ideas, and could make best use of them, were more likely to thrive. The fittest in this cultural sense could be the one who is most imitated, leaves the most disciples, or whose philosophy or technology has been adopted the most widely. Language, in effect, helped bootstrap the development of our powerful and flexible brains. We like to think that we created language, but this is back to front. Language created us. Locating the origins of language could help to shed light on the origins of humanity.

 But tracing the trickle of grunts and other utterances that lies at the source of this mighty river of sounds is fraught with difficulty. Words leave no petrified remains. If only the damp rock walls of a mossy cave could carry the faint imprint of conversations that were held there long ago. If only there was a way to extract ancient sounds from the sand, pebbles, and stones that litter a prehistoric settlement. What an incredible story they would tell! A tale of mammoth hunts, of the struggles against rival tribes with flint weapons, the demise of our cousins the Neanderthals, the rise of agriculture, cities, and civilization and so much more. But there’s no record. Not a trace. Not a single acoustic fossil to reveal any syntactic precedents, nor how language came into being. We cannot hear the voices of the dead.

I believe that the solution to the mystery of language’s beginning lies not only in linguistics but in understanding our ancient origins. Language had to evolve with cooperation, since individuals are not going to bother to learn new ways to communicate with each other unless they are already working together to some extent. Associations between noises that we can make and the meanings we want to communicate can only knit and form when information transfer is beneficial for both speaker and listener. In this way, language and cooperation coevolved.

Excerpted from page 172-173 of ‘Super co-operators ’ by Martin Nowak