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June 27, 2007

Gesture at least 6 million years old

Meaningful, communicative gestures are shared by humans and other great apes. As with human groups, different groups of chimpanzees and bonobos may use the same gesture to mean completely different things. New Scientist, The Economist, PNAS.

Posted at 01:36 PM in Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gesture |

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  • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, The First Word is about the quest for the origins of human language. Although language is a distinctly human gift, it leaves no permanent trace and its evolution has long been a mystery. It is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being. The First Word follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why language evolution was considered a scientific taboo for more than a hundred years and why scientists are at last able to explore the subject.
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CHRISTINE KENNEALLY

  • Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, Time, New Scientist, The Monthly, and other publications. Her book, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, is published by Penguin. Before becoming a reporter, she received a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University and a B.A. (Hons) in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University. She was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in England, Iowa, and Brooklyn, New York (ckenneally at ckenneally dot com).

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