Science: The Axe Swings, the Man Talks ; No One Really Knows Why or When Language Evolved. but a New Study Suggests That Tools May Have Been the Key to Teaching Our Ancestors to Speak, Says Steve Connor

Connor, Steve, The Independent (London, England)

Language is the key feature that distinguishes humankind from animals, yet evolutionary anthropologists know next to nothing about how it came about, when and, most important of all, why. Ancient tools, the first fire and the earliest art have all left some sort of record behind. But the spoken word - which long pre-dated writing - leaves no fossils, bones or stone artefacts. Some evolutionists have supposed that language evolved because it almost had to - a direct and inevitable development from the more basic forms of social communication seen in other primates. This argument says that language developed because it allowed people to speak to one another. But Stanley Ambrose, a …

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Publication information: Article title: Science: The Axe Swings, the Man Talks ; No One Really Knows Why or When Language Evolved. but a New Study Suggests That Tools May Have Been the Key to Teaching Our Ancestors to Speak, Says Steve Connor. Contributors: Connor, Steve - Author. Newspaper title: The Independent (London, England). Publication date: March 9, 2001. Page number: 8. © 2009 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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