Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- SECTION 1 THE LAY OF THE LAND
- SECTION 2 MEET THE ANCESTORS
- SECTION 3 THE EVOLUTION OF SPEECH
- SECTION 4 EVALUATING PHYLOGENETIC MODELS OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
- Glossary
- Appendix: species names
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- Species index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- SECTION 1 THE LAY OF THE LAND
- SECTION 2 MEET THE ANCESTORS
- SECTION 3 THE EVOLUTION OF SPEECH
- SECTION 4 EVALUATING PHYLOGENETIC MODELS OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
- Glossary
- Appendix: species names
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- Species index
Summary
SOME Hindus had brought an elephant for exhibition and placed it in a dark house. Crowds of people were going into that dark place to see the beast. Finding that ocular inspection was impossible, each visitor felt it with his palm in the darkness. The palm of one fell on the trunk. ‘This creature is like a water-spout,’ he said. The hand of another lighted on the elephant's ear. To him the beast was evidently like a fan. Another rubbed against its leg. ‘I found the elephant's shape is like a pillar,’ he said. Another laid his hand on its back. ‘Certainly this elephant was like a throne,’ he said.
The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast.
– From Rumi's Tales from the Masnavi (translated from Persian by A. J. Arberry)Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human: the unique power of language to represent and share unbounded thoughts is critical to all human societies, and has played a central role in the rise of our species in the last million years from a minor and peripheral member of the sub-Saharan African ecological community to the dominant species on the planet today. Despite intensive searching, it appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
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- Information
- The Evolution of Language , pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010