The Language Puzzle

How We Talked Our Way Out of the Stone Age

By: Steven Mithen

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Hardcover | 7 March 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover
544 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.6 x 16.2 x 4.8

Hardcover

$59.99

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A groundbreaking new account of prehistory from one of the most esteemed archaeologists working today

'Wonderful ... A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share - language' Robin Dunbar

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While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language, it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a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.

Industry Reviews

'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 on' - Dean Falk, Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University and author

'A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share - language - written with Mithen's wonderful ability to combine deep insights with a story engagingly told' - Robin Dunbar, anthropologist and author

'Praise for The Singing Neanderthals:

'Illuminating and thought-provoking' - The Times

'The most perspicacious portrait of the role of communication among our remote predecessors that I have ever encountered ... A landmark book' - New York Review of Books

'Wonderfully evocative ... A highly original view of our musical origins' - Guardian

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