A groundbreaking new account of prehistory from one of the most esteemed archaeologists working today
The relationship between language, thought and culture is of concern to anyone with an interest in what it means to be human.
The Language Puzzle explains how the invention of words at 1.6 million years ago began the evolution of human language from the ape-like calls of our earliest ancestors to our capabilities of today, with over 6000 languages in the world and each of us knowing over 50,000 words.
Drawing on the latest discoveries in archaeology, linguistics, psychology, and genetics, Steven Mithen reconstructs the steps by which language evolved; he explains how it transformed the nature of thought and culture, and how we talked our way out of the Stone Age into the world of farming and swiftly into today’s Digital Age.
While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language, it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a new standard account for how humanity began.
Steven Mithen is Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading. He previously studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Universities of Sheffield, York and Cambridge, before joining the University of Reading. An award-winning archaeologist, Steven Mithen specialises in prehistoric hunter-gatherers and the earliest Neolithic farmers, with long-term field projects in southern Jordan and western Scotland. He is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, New Scientist and The Guardian and has authored over 200 academic articles and books, including The Singing Neanderthals and After the Ice. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2004.
“A fascinating history of ideas and a masterful synthesis of the latest insights from linguistics, archaeology, genetics, neuroscience and AI – providing us with a compelling theory of the evolution of language. The Language Puzzle is a tour de force.” — Alice Roberts, Professor of Public Engagement in Science at University of Birmingham and author of Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials.
“An epic achievement that, more than any other book out there, rises to the challenge of elucidating the immense complexity that underpinned the emergence and evolution of human language… keeps the reader deliciously hanging.” — Dean Falk, Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University and author of The Fossil Chronicles.
“A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share – language – written with Mithen&rsuo;s wonderful ability to combine deep insights with a story engagingly told.” — Robin Dunbar, anthropologist and author of Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships.
“An authoritative, dense yet accessible synthesis, The Language Puzzle is a superbly up-to-date guide to the complex and variegated evolution of language. Encompassing a huge and multidisciplinary scope of knowledge and covering some 5 million years, this fascinating book shows that asking how and why we came to speak also means exploring what it is to be human.” — Rebecca Wragg Sykes, archaeologist and author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
“Relating the evolution of the human lineage while attempting to integrate linguistics, genetics, archeology, and semiotics in proposing a holistic explanation for language evolution is no small task. However, in this remarkably accessible narrative, Mithen weaves a thoughtful and engaging account across time, bodies, places, and materials. Whether or not one agrees, in total or in part, with the assumptions and assertions in the book, it offers a bounty of valuable insights and has much to teach us all.” — Agustín Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark.
“How humans acquired their most important and mysterious mental skill remains a fascinating mystery. Steven Mithen describes the leading clues from diverse sources so clearly that The Language Puzzle is a sleuth’s equivalent to one-stop shopping. The origin of language is beginning to look like a solvable problem.” — Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire
