'A tour de force' Alice Roberts
'Wonderful ... A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share - language' Robin Dunbar
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While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language, it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a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.
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Information
Index
Social SciencesTable of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Introduction: the puzzle of language
- 2. A brief history of humankind
- 3. Words and language
- 4. Monkeys and apes
- 5. Speaking and hearing
- 6. Iconic and arbitrary words
- 7. Making tools
- 8. Lessons from an artificial language
- 9. Finding and learning the meaning of words
- 10. Fire
- 11. Language and the brain
- 12. The genetics of language
- 13. Words keep changing
- 14. Language, perception and thought
- 15. Signs and symbols
- 16. Conclusion: the evolution of language
- Figure sources
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
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Yes, you can access The Language Puzzle by Steven Mithen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Historical & Comparative Linguistics. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.