For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...

Progovac's study challenges two dominant narratives in human evolution: "survival of the fittest" (physical strength) and "survival of the friendliest" (prosociality). While both played a role, ...

RESEARCH on the evolution of language suggests that our communication is largely about cooperation. When we speak with each other, the idea goes, we do so to help coordinate our actions. Antelope ...

An international team of linguists and geneticists has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...

Chimpanzees Asanti and Akuna vocalising. A new study shows that wild chimpanzees use a variety of call combinations to expand messaging. Humans are the only species on earth known to use language.