Publishers Weekly
04/08/2024
In this fascinating analysis, archaeologist Mithen (The Singing Neanderthals) chronicles human ancestors’ progress from grunts and screams to jokes and poetry. Primate studies offer insight into the origins of language, Mithen contends, suggesting that chimpanzees’ combination of grunts, barks, and other noises in predictable sequences might indicate primitive syntax. Tracing how the physical evolution of the brain, tongue, throat, and ears gave hominins more intelligence and articulate vocal tracts, Mithen argues that by one million years ago homo erectus was likely uttering “iconic words,” whose sounds mimic features of the objects they describe (“Languages throughout the world use hard consonants for father, as in dad and pa, and soft, vowel-like consonants... for mother, as in mommy”). The Neanderthals developed bigger vocabularies and sentences governed by grammar, and were followed by homo sapiens, whose more sophisticated brains invented abstract words and metaphors that made language a font of cognitive creativity. In down-to-earth prose, Mithen weaves a wealth of genetic, linguistic, and paleoanthropological research into a coherent tapestry, with surprising revelations about Stone Age communication as well as present-day language. (Babies automatically process the frequency with which certain syllables follow each other to pick discrete words out of speech.) The result is a stimulating inquiry into the origins of language. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management. (June)
From the Publisher
An expert education into 'the most fundamental aspect of the modern mind.'”—Kirkus
“How humans acquired their most important and mysterious mental skill remains a fascinating mystery. Steven Mithen describes the leading clues from diverse sources so clearly that The Language Puzzle is a sleuth’s equivalent to one-stop shopping. The origin of language is beginning to look like a solvable problem.”—Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire
“An authoritative, dense, yet accessible synthesis, The Language Puzzle is a superbly up-to-date guide to the complex and variegated evolution of language. Encompassing a huge and multidisciplinary scope of knowledge and covering some five million years, this fascinating book shows that asking how and why we came to speak also means exploring what it is to be human.”—Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred
“A fascinating history of ideas and a masterful synthesis of the latest insights from linguistics, archaeology, genetics, neuroscience, and AI—providing us with a compelling theory of the evolution of language. The Language Puzzle is a tour de force.”—Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors
“Relating the evolution of the human lineage while attempting to integrate linguistics, genetics, archeology, and semiotics in proposing a holistic explanation for language evolution is no small task. However, in this remarkably accessible narrative, Mithen weaves a thoughtful and engaging account across time, bodies, places, and materials. Whether or not one agrees, in total or in part, with the assumptions and assertions in the book, it offers a bounty of valuable insights and has much to teach us all.”—Agustín Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark
“A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share—language—written with Mithen’s wonderful ability to combine deep insights with a story engagingly told.”—Robin Dunbar, author of Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language
“Mithen’s book The Language Puzzle addresses when, why, and in which hominins nascent linguistic abilities emerged and how, over vast amounts of time, they evolved into language as we know it. Chapter by chapter, Mithen gleans relevant clues—he calls them fragments or puzzle pieces—from fossil hominins, genetics, comparative anatomy, brain evolution, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), the archaeological record of stone tools and art, and much more. Fragments about linguistics, for example, suggest that the evolution of language had its roots in apelike vocalizations that paved the way for the subsequent invention of various kinds of words, grammar, and, ultimately, abstract language and thought. Intriguingly, Mithen uses the puzzle pieces to attribute different levels of linguistic development to various hominin species and then draws parallels with the cognitive skills each species likely used to produce their kinds of stone tools and (where applicable) art. However, Mithen keeps the reader deliciously hanging on until the end, when he finally assembles all of the puzzle pieces into a big picture that spells out the different levels of linguistic accomplishment of australopithecines, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens. (You’ll need to read the book to find out which one is credited with developing the first true language.) Not only is The Language Puzzle extremely readable, it is also an epic achievement that, more than any other book out there, rises to the challenge of elucidating the immense complexity that underpinned the emergence and evolution of human language.”—Dean Falk, author of Finding Our Tongues
Kirkus Reviews
2024-03-15
Readers of this book likely know at least 50,000 words and speak around 16,000 every day. Mithen provides the story of how they came to do it.
Language, like history or biology, is a massive field of study, and a one-volume overview is no mean feat. Mithen, a professor of early prehistory and author of The Singing Neanderthal, combines lucid prose with a lifetime of experience in this compendious exploration of linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, geography, genetics, and philosophy. The author explains that modern languages (there are around 7,000) arrange words into “meaningful utterances using rules to modify and place them into a particular order.” Without languages, we would still be living as Stone Age hunter-gatherers. “Unlike toolmaking, walking on two legs, and complex patterns of social relations,” writes Mithen, “language has remained stubbornly aloof from the primate world, becoming the last bastion of human uniqueness.” The term miraculous, a shopworn word in science writing, remains a universally accepted description of how infants learn one or even several languages perfectly in a few years. Adults find it much harder. Raised as human children, even the most brilliant chimpanzee never attains the proficiency of a 2-year-old human. In 15 lengthy chapters, the author explores such a wide range of topics that the book serves well as a popular, definitely not dumbed-down account of human evolution. Some chapters—e.g., on primate communication, or the vocal tract—contain more information than many readers may want to know. Others (fire, toolmaking) are informative, despite covering areas well served by entire books. Dramatic advances in neuroscience and genetics haven’t turned up a brain area or genes specific for language, but there is no doubt that the words we use influence how we perceive the world.
An expert education into “the most fundamental aspect of the modern mind.
