New theory links storytelling, firelight and the rise of spoken language
The campfire may have done more than keep our ancestors warm. It may have helped turn ape-like communication into language.
For hundreds of thousands of years, fire stretched the human day beyond sunset, gathering people into a flickering circle when hunting, gathering and other practical work had stopped. A new theory argues that this unusual social setting (no other creature could control fire) may have created the conditions for something radically different to emerge: sustained storytelling.
The researchers argue that the cozy setting transformed the way our ancestors communicated — from gestures tied closely to the here and now into the flexible spoken language humans use today.
Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St Andrews, and Nathaniel J. Dominy, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College were inspired to embark on this study after trying to answer a pretty awkward-sounding question: what did early humans actually need language for?
Other great apes already manage many jobs once invoked to explain language. They coordinate activities, learn tool traditions, form alliances and communicate intentionally. Chimpanzees and gorillas possess large gestural repertoires, and a 2024 Current Biology study found that chimpanzee gestural exchanges show rapid turn-taking with timing similar to human conversation.
“It starts to look like human language didn’t evolve for anything very useful!” Hobaiter said in a University of St Andrews news release.
Of course, language is extraordinarily useful now. We couldn’t build something more advanced than a two-story hut out of straw if we couldn’t communicate symbolically, beyond finger pointing and “uga-buga” shouts.
Her point is that many practical problems facing a small, familiar group may not have required it to get started. So, what then, was the evolutionary incentive? [Continue reading…]