Language Evolution

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, The Origin of Language argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children. Journeying to the dawn of Homo sapiens, evolutionary biologist Madeleine...

The Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney makes a radical, compelling new account of the birth of language that puts women at the centre of the story. Conventional explanations for how humans became ‘the language animal’ (proposed by men such as Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker and Yuval...

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, The Origin of Language argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children. Journeying to the dawn of Homo sapiens, evolutionary biologist Madeleine...

Brought to you by Penguin. What is language? Why do we have it? Where does it come from? Why does that matter? Upending centuries of scholarship (including, most recently, Chomsky and Pinker) The Language Game shows how people learn to talk not by acquiring fixed meanings and rules, but by...

This volume will revise the way we look at the modern populations of Latin America and North America by providing a totally new view of the history of Native-American and African-American peoples throughout the hemisphere. Africans and Native Americans explores key issues relating to the evolution of racial terminology and European colonialists' perceptions of color, analyzing the development of color classification systems and the specific evolution of key terms such as black, mulatto, and mestizo, which no longer carry their original meanings.

Brought to you by Penguin. Stunning advances in digital technology have introduced a new wave of human-like AI systems. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are already reshaping economies, challenge democracies, and reshaping society in unpredictable ways. And soon, these AI systems could...

Matthew Syed traces the origins and evolution of the word 'woke’ Once a watchword for African Americans in the early 1900s, 'woke' is now used as an insult across the political spectrum, and it has become synonymous with our era of angry debate. As the word has spread, what people mean by it...

Forget the language instinct—this is the story of how we make up language as we go Language is perhaps humanity’s most astonishing capacity—and one that remains poorly understood. In The Language Game, cognitive scientists Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater show us where...

From blurry vision to crooked teeth, ACLs that tear at alarming rates and spines that seem to spend a lifetime falling apart—it’s surprising that human beings have beaten the odds as a species Evolution Gone Wrong is an eye-opening look into why our bodies work—or don’t—the way they do...

In this ambitious book, Jieun Kiaer explores the lives of English words in the twenty-first century, when the creation and use of language has become an increasingly dynamic, interactive, and diverse process in which ordinary people have taken leading roles—offering such coinages as "flexitarian," "MeToo," "glow up," and "shitizen" to "No sabo kids" and beyond. As English language grows ever more diverse, Kiaer believes, we need a paradigm shift. 

Brought to you by Penguin. "Vital is [Gaia Vince's] narration: enthusiastic and lucid." - The Times Humans now live longer and better than ever before, and we are the most populous big animal on earth. Meanwhile, our closest living relatives, the now-endangered chimpanzees, continue to live as...

Discover the sweeping history of linguistics and human evolution, tracing our journey from ancient grunts to modern AI. Perfect for an educational daily commute, this thought-provoking deep dive reveals how shared sounds transformed into world-building power. Language is not merely a tool for...

‘Fascinating’ Greta Thunberg ‘Extraordinary’ Merlin Sheldrake ‘A must-read’ New Scientist ‘Enthralling’ George Monbiot ‘Brilliant’ Philip Hoare THIS REVOLUTIONARY AUDIOBOOK FEATURES PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD BLUE WHALE VOICES, DOLPHIN ORCHESTRAS AND SOUNDBATHS FROM BENEATH THE SEA...

As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of 'correct' style? With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of Internet-age expressiveness, Favilla argues that rather than try to preserve the sanctity of the written language as laid out by Strunk and White, we should be concerned with the larger issues of clarity, flexibility, playfulness and political awareness. Her approach to the new rules - as practical as they are fun - will fascinate and delight believers and naysayers alike.

Warum sind wir Menschen so verschieden? Sind wir nicht merkwürdig, wir Menschen, mit verschiedenartigem Aussehen, anderen Sprachen und unterschiedlichen Religionen? Der Evolutionsbiologe Josef H. Reichholf greift das Thema Evolution anhand der alltäglichen Erfahrungen auf, die junge Menschen z.B. bei ihren Mitschülern machen: Jeder Einzelne ist anders, dazu kommt die äußerliche Verschiedenheit durch Kinder asiatischer oder schwarzafrikanischer Herkunft.

“A fascinating and original account of the history of life. It is full of new insights about evolution and history, and even more importantly—with new viewpoints.” —Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind A daring new planetary...

In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these...

What makes us human? Why are we the only animals who wear clothes, drive cars, trawl the internet, and fly helicopters on Mars? It’s all because we’ve learnt to talk, yet remarkably, we still don’t know how we did it. Speech! suggests an answer that’s been hiding in plain sight - the simple yet radical shift that turned our analog grunts and shrieks into words. But, its consequences are far from simple: being able to share ideas through language was an evolutionary tipping point - it allowed us to link up our minds.

Born into a digital wonderland, our children are practically mini hackers right from the crib! Most of them were handed a device before they could walk, they clicked before they took their first bite and scrolled before they said their first words. But living online is a giant uncontrolled...

Uncover the evolutionary history of human communication, tracing our journey from prehistoric grunts to the digital age. Perfect for curious minds seeking an educational commute, this thought-provoking deep dive explores how a clever primate developed the tools for complex speech. Far from dry...