SPEECH! How Language Made Us Human

Description

What makes us human? Why are we the only animals who wear clothes, surf social media, and send robots to Mars? It’s all because we’ve learnt to talk: yet remarkably, we still don’t know how we did it. SPEECH! suggests an answer that’s been hiding in plain sight – a simple yet radical shift that turned our primitive grunts and shrieks to words. But the consequences were far from simple, for language was an evolutionary tipping point: it gave us the power to share ideas and pass on knowledge. SPEECH! traces our roller-coaster ride from hunter-gatherer to urban hipster: the epic tale of humanity’s struggle to escape the traps of culture, religion and identity – a journey that leaves us poised on the brink of a destiny we may still resist, but must now embrace if we wish to survive…