Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

© 1996 James Steele, Stephen Shennan and contributors. If anything can be said to demarcate humans from other animals, it must surely be language. Language has enabled us to produce culture, literature, religion and science. Nonetheless, discussions of language invariably tend to assume its existence; worse still, perhaps, they assume that it arose in order to make culture possible. But, biologically speaking, this is a very peculiar (and all but indefensible) claim, for it rests on the assumption that things can evolve in order to serve a purpose that has not yet come into existence, for without language culture cannot exist.

Original publication

DOI

10.4324/9780203974131

Type

Chapter

Book title

The Archaeology of Human Ancestry: Power, Sex and Tradition

Publication Date

01/01/2005

Pages

341 - 356