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Why Do Humans Speak?

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Manage episode 504045681 series 2391446
Content provided by Michael Shermer. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Michael Shermer or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children.

Beekman reveals the “happy accidents” hidden in our molecular biology—DNA, chromosomes, and proteins—that led to one of the most fateful events in the history of life on Earth: our giving birth to babies earlier in their development than our hominid cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Faced with highly dependent infants requiring years of nurturing and protection, early human communities needed to cooperate and coordinate, and it was this unprecedented need for communication that triggered the creation of human language—and changed everything.

Madeleine Beekman is professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her new book is The Origin of Language.

  continue reading

553 episodes

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Why Do Humans Speak?

The Michael Shermer Show

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Manage episode 504045681 series 2391446
Content provided by Michael Shermer. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Michael Shermer or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children.

Beekman reveals the “happy accidents” hidden in our molecular biology—DNA, chromosomes, and proteins—that led to one of the most fateful events in the history of life on Earth: our giving birth to babies earlier in their development than our hominid cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Faced with highly dependent infants requiring years of nurturing and protection, early human communities needed to cooperate and coordinate, and it was this unprecedented need for communication that triggered the creation of human language—and changed everything.

Madeleine Beekman is professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her new book is The Origin of Language.

  continue reading

553 episodes

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