Becoming Eloquent

Few topics of scientific enquiry have attracted more attention in the last decade than the origin and evolution of language. Few have offered an equivalent intellectual challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations between linguistics, cognitive science, prehistoric archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics, neurophysiology, computer science and robotics. The contributions presented in this volume reflect the multiplicity of interests and research strategy used to tackle this complex issue, summarize new relevant data and emerging theories, provide an updated view of this interdisciplinary venture, and, when possible, seek a future in this broad field of study.

“This is an extremely sophisticated example of cooperative research. With such an interdisciplinary approach to language origins and diffusion, the field is bound to make progress understanding these and related issues. The scale of comparisons and syntheses, alone, are bound to result in new ways of thinking about language among Neandertals, and even earlier species, and modern humans.”
Lewis Binford, Emeritus University Professor, University of New Mexico