The Evolution of Language: evidence from the fossil and archaeological records
Dr. Steven Mithen
May15 1999
A capacity for language is unique to the human species and appeared during the last 6 million years of human evolution. Various theories have been put forward as to when and why language evolved and whether suddenly or gradually. The fossil and archaeological record provides one means of evaluating these theories and they lead us to some surprising conclusions. Dr. Mithen considers a sample of these theories and focuses on what type of language our close human relatives, such as the Neanderthals, may have possessed. Using slides, he will examine some of the fossils and artefacts of our ancestors and ask what implications these may have had for the evolution of language.
Dr. Steven Mithen is Reader in Early Prehistory at the University of Reading, having studied at the Universities of Sheffield, York and Cambridge. His archaeological fieldwork focuses on late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter gatherers, having excavated in Western Scotland. He is currently working at Wadi Faynam, Jordan. His books have been concerned with prehistoric behaviour and cognition: Thoughtful Foragers: a Study of Prehistoric Decision-Making (CUP, 1990), The Prehistory of Mind (Thames & Hudson, 1996/Phoenix, 1998) and Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory (Edited; Routledge, 1998).