Evolang Post #5 – d’Errico and Bickerton

There were just two more plenary speakers at the end of the conference and both delivered fascinating and controversial presentations.

The archaeological positions on language evolution are complicated and frequently bitter. Archaeologists are reluctant to speculate on anything that doesn’t fossilise and the emergence of language is embedded into several, broader debates about how humans emerged. Firstly there is a debate about how late or early modern human behaviour emerged. Secondly a debate about when anatomically modern humans emerged, and finally a debate over the geographical pattern of emergence of modern humans (both behaviourally and biologically).