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The Language Puzzle

How We Talked Our Way out of the Stone Age

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The Language Puzzle

By: Steven Mithen
Narrated by: Kerry Hutchinson
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About this listen

The relationship between language, thought and culture is of concern to anyone with an interest in what it means to be human.

The Language Puzzle explains how the invention of words at 1.6 million years ago began the evolution of human language from the ape-like calls of our earliest ancestors to our capabilities of today, with over 6000 languages in the world and each of us knowing over 50,000 words.

Drawing on the latest discoveries in archaeology, linguistics, psychology, and genetics, Steven Mithen reconstructs the steps by which language evolved; he explains how it transformed the nature of thought and culture, and how we talked our way out of the Stone Age into the world of farming and swiftly into today's Digital Age.

While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language, it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a new standard account for how humanity began.

©2024 Steven Mithen (P)2024 Profile Books Ltd Anthropology Linguistics Words, Language & Grammar
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Profile Image for Jakob Jørgensen

Me Tarzan

He doesn't get, that serious science can be fun 🙁 He poopoos the memes of pop culture, for no good reason. A mind virus he probably contacted from his woke friends.

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