Lecture 4
Other social-origin theory of
language by Modern day
Scholars.
1
Mark Pagel
Daniel Everett
The Social Origins of Language Workshop London 2011.
Mark Pagel
• Evolutionary biologist, with a rather interesting take on
language: language is a dangerous and powerful tool.
• He argues that language evolved with humans and
uniquely to humans, distinguishing us from all other
species, including our closest relatives like Neanderthals.
Source:[Link]
• Language is profoundly intertwined with human society, e/mark-pagel-12034/
acting as both a driver and a consequence of human
evolution and social development.
He highlights the power of language, drawing reference to
the Tower of Babel story:
"The biblical story of the Tower of Babel" illustrates this;
humans, sharing a single powerful language, could "work together and
cooperate to build a tower".
The destruction of the tower and the scattering of people
with separate languages were intended to prevent them Fig: The Tower of babel
Source: Pieter Brueghel the Elder,
from working together again, highlighting language's role Public domain, via Wikimedia
in collective action. Commons
● Our species rose around 200000 years ago and developed social
learning, separating us from other primates. Even from Homo erectus
and Neanderthals.
● However, social learning is ‘visual theft’ and our ancestors must have
faced this dilemma.
● Therefore, language evolved to solve this crisis of visual theft and to
exploit cooperation.
“Language is a piece of social technology to enhance the benefit of
cooperation”.
Identity creation
• Language allows humans to make
plans, cooperate, share, and club
together, as well as record and
transmit instructions and vast
amounts of information.
• Not only language is used for creating
cooperative groups, but also to create
“rings around our cooperative groups,
in order to protect our knowledge,
wisdom and skills from
eavesdropping”.
• In other words, to create distinct
identities.
6
• Pagel in his work, has focused on the “secret weapon” of our species
which is ‘cooperation’.
• As society progressed and we indulged in ‘social action’, the tool that
helped us “in exchange of ideas, striking deals and coordinating activities”
was language.
• Thus, language, along with other factors, is integral to the social
dimension as well as development of human species itself.
• Not just that, language also ‘watches’ our social behavior, thus regulating
it.
(Pagel, 2012;280)
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Promoting replicator’s interest: language and
other systems in humans
• Compositionality: language operates digitally, using discrete "chunks" (words) that can be
endlessly combined and recombined into new sentences; a capability unmatched in the animal
kingdom.
• Rapid Brain Expansion: Over the last two million years, the human brain underwent an
extraordinarily rapid increase in size. This metabolically costly expansion, accounting for 20% of
basal metabolism, suggesting it must provide significant advantages.
• The FOXP2 Gene: recent research indicates that humans regulate and express their FOXP2 gene
differently, affecting at least 61 other genes. This difference in regulation is a key reason why Pagel
believes Neanderthals did not have language.
8
• Symbolic Thinking: Humans demonstrate a
profound capacity for symbolic thinking that is
absent in Neanderthals and other species.
• By 40,000 years ago, humans were creating
extraordinary sculptures like the Venus figurines
and the Lion-man of Hohlenstein, intricate cave
art, and playable musical instruments.
• This level of symbolic expression suggests a rich,
non-literal existence, in contrast to the more
"plodding and literal" existence Pagel attributes
to Neanderthals
• ToM: theory of mind is Perhaps the most
powerful reason for human language
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Sculpting Language
• Humans actively sculpted language to serve their interests. Words, as cultural objects
transmitted from mind to mind rather than genetically, undergo a form of natural selection.
• The vast majority of possible words are not used; instead, humans have selected a tiny,
rarified subset.
• Frequently used words are demonstrably shorter and easier to pronounce, having fewer
"obstruents" (sounds that obstruct the airway).
• Thus, language is not merely a tool for communication, but a “self-interested piece of social
technology”.
In essence, language, as a powerful form of compositional
communication, arose in humans due to a unique combination of
brain development, genetic changes, symbolic thought, and the
ability to attribute mental states to others.
It then became a primary driver of human expansion, cultural
innovation, and even subsequent genetic adaptations,
fundamentally shaping what it means to be human.
11
Daniel Everett: Language as Cultural Technology
Language likely began with Homo erectus (1.5–2 million years ago)
instead of Homo-sapiens, who already engaged in cooperative
hunting, fire control, and tool use (Everett 2017)
These activities required increasingly complex gestural, mimetic, and
vocal communication (Donald, 1991; Corballis, 2002).
Source:
Humans invented language to plan, share knowledge, and maintain [Link]
com/books/interview-daniel-
social cohesion (Everett, 2017). everett-bentley-university
12
His argument against nativists
• Like other cultural tools, language is a technology for survival (Everett, 2017).
• Hence, unlike nativist claims that language emerged suddenly, Everett (2017)
views language as evolving gradually, rather than as a sudden break in human
experience—where at one moment we did not have language and, in the next, we
did, due to some genetic mutation.
• Instead, he argues, language developed as a cultural invention, deeply rooted in
social interaction and survival needs (Everett, 2017).
13
The Evolution of Symbolic Communication
language is considered the greatest technology ever invented, and he
uses "invention" not as a metaphor, but to describe technology emerging
from a culture rather than a single individual.
In contrast to Pagel, Everett posits that Homo erectus invented language
at least 1 million years ago, possibly closer to 1.8 million years ago,
meaning that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were born into a world
that already had language.
Everett (2017) defines communication as "the transfer of information"
and language as "the transfer of information via symbols". For him, the
primary unit of language is the conversation, suggesting that symbols
would never have arisen outside of conversations.
14
Also, literacy had a role to play
• Everett (2017) suggests that literacy significantly contributed to language
complexity, allowing for editing and the construction of more intricate
sentences.
• However, he also clarifies that many unwritten languages today are
highly complex, some in their sound systems, others in their grammar.
• For example, Pirahã has simple syntax but incredibly complex
morphology, with tens of thousands of forms for verb
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To sum up
• Everett proposes that language, as a technology of symbol use, was invented
by Homo erectus as a result of their
• unique cognitive abilities and
• the complex cultural demands of their survival and advancements
• For example, sophisticated tool-making, organised settlements, and
seafaring, all required advanced communication.
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• Linguists, psychologists (cognitive, social, and
developmental), sociologists and
anthropologists, biologists and geneticists,
neuroscientists and philosophers,
palaeontologists and archaeologists,
ethologists and primatologists, evolutionists,
THE SOCIAL ORIGIN OF and computer scientists came together for a
LANGUAGE WORKSHOP, small but intensive workshop named 'The
2011 Social Origins of Language’.
• Held at the Department of Anthropology,
University College London in February 2011.
• They came up with a social origin theory of
language.
1. The Problem of Language Origins
● There are several theories about the evolution of language. For instance, the
Bow-wow, Pooh-pooh, Ding-dong, Yo-he-ho, and La-la theories (Jespersen,
1922), along with more recent and influential accounts such as the Gesture-
first theory (Corballis, 2002), Dunbar's Social Grooming hypothesis (1996),
Everett's Cultural Invention theory (2017), and the Co-evolutionary theory of
Dor & Jablonka (2014).
● However, in this section, our main focus will be to trace the social origins of
language evolution, examining how cooperation, trust, and cultural practices
shaped its emergence.
• Traditional approaches, especially Chomsky's, have focused on
language as an internal cognitive system (I-language), separate
from society and culture (Chomsky 1986, 2005, 2012).
• However, this view sidelines the social and cooperative
dimensions that are crucial for explaining how language could
have emerged and stabilised across human groups.
• Humans share 95–98% of their genome with chimpanzees, yet
only humans developed symbolic language and culture (Sinha,
2014).
• This creates a continuity vs. discontinuity problem: biological
similarity but radical cultural-cognitive difference (King, 1999)
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2. Limits of the Gene-Centred Approach
Chomskyan View
The Chomskyan view sees language as a genetic endowment, a
computational system in the brain, largely independent of social
context. That is the result of the FOXP2 gene.
Gene-Culture Coevolution
Dor and Jablonka (2014) argue that language did not emerge suddenly
from a genetic mutation (as in Chomsky's view) but through a process
of gene–culture coevolution, where social and cultural dynamics
played the leading role.
Behavioural Changes First
Evolutionary biology now shows that behavioural and cultural changes
often precede genetic changes (Dor & Jablonka, 2014). Hence, they argue:
behavioural and cultural changes often come first, and only later are they
stabilised genetically.
• Among the scholars, it is an accepted fact that multiple factors were
involved in the evolution of language, and society is one such factor.
• Thus, language must be understood as arising through cultural innovation
and cooperative behaviour, not just genetic mutation.
3. Language as a Social and Communal Object
• Language is not like stereoscopic vision, which is a purely biological
adaptation of an individual (Pinker, 1994).
• It is inherently a collective communicative technology (Dor, 2014).
• Human beings are unique because of their capacity for collective
exploration and invention (e.g., rituals, child-rearing, cooperative
hunting, etc.). These collective practices created new opportunities for
communication systems to emerge and stabilise.
• It requires shared trust, cooperation, and cultural traditions for stability
and transmission across generations (Whiten, 1999; Henrich & Gil-
White, 2001).
• Language resides at the community level and is acquired as part of
socialisation (Dor, Knight, & Lewis, 2014).
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• Precondition for language: cooperation and
trust.
Other ideas • Use of symbolism among humans.
proposed • Social and ritual foundations of symbolism:
Watt’s two-stage model.
• Language as a biocultural niche.
• Collective innovation and cultural evolution.
(see annexure)
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“So, Language emerged not from genes alone but
from cooperation, trust, and shared symbolic
culture”
The social origins of language reveal that our most
distinctive human capacity arose through
collective innovation, ritual practices, and the
construction of symbolic niches—not through a
simple genetic mutation, but through the profound
transformation of how we live together.
End of lecture 4
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REFERENCEs
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● Christiansen, M. H., & Kirby, S. (2003). Language evolution. Oxford University Press.
● Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. Praeger.
● Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry.
● Chomsky, N. (2012). The science of language: Interviews with James McGilvray. Cambridge University Press.
● Corballis, M. C. (2002). From hand to mouth: The origins of language. Princeton University Press.
● Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford University Press.
● Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition.
Harvard University Press.
● Dor, D. (2015). The instruction of imagination: Language as a social communication technology. Oxford
University Press.
● Dor, D., Knight, C., & Lewis, J. (2014). The social origins of language. Oxford University Press.
● Dor, D., & Jablonka, E. (2014). How language changed the genes: Toward an explicit account of the
evolution of language. In D. Dor, C. Knight, & J. Lewis (Eds.), The social origins of language. Oxford
University Press.
● Dunbar, R. (1996). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press.
● Durkheim, É. (1912/1995). The elementary forms of religious life (K. E. Fields, Trans.). Free Press.
● Everett, D. L. (2005). Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology.
● Everett, D. L. (2008). Don’t sleep, there are snakes: Life and language in the Amazonian jungle. Pantheon
Books.
● Everett, D. L. (2012). Grammar, culture, and cognition. Language and Linguistics Compass.
● Everett, D. L. (2017). How language began: The story of humanity’s greatest invention. Liveright Publishing.
● Henrich, J., & Gil-White, F. J. (2001). The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism
for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior.
● Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (2005). Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and
symbolic variation in the history of life. MIT Press.
● Jespersen, O. (1922). Language: Its nature, development and origin. George Allen & Unwin.
● King, R. (1999). The continuity–discontinuity debate. Cambridge University Press.
● Knight, C. (2014). Decoding Chomsky. In D. Dor, C. Knight, & J. Lewis (Eds.), The social origins of language.
Oxford University Press.
● Lotman, Y. M. (1990). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. I. B. Tauris.
● Odling-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N., & Feldman, M. W. (2003). Niche construction: The neglected process
in evolution. Princeton University Press.
● Pagel, M. (2012). Wired for culture: Origins of the human social mind. W. W. Norton & Company.
● Pagel M. Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator. Nat Rev Genet. 2009
Jun;10(6):405-15. doi: 10.1038/nrg2560. PMID: 19421237.
● Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. William Morrow.
● Pinker, S., & Jackendoff, R. (2005). The faculty of language: What’s special about it? Cognition.
● Power, C. (2014). Signalling, imagination and the origins of language. In D. Dor, C. Knight, & J. Lewis
(Eds.), The social origins of language. Oxford University Press.
● Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. Free Press.
● Sinha, C. (2014). Language and other artifacts: Socio-cultural dynamics of niche construction. In D. Dor,
C. Knight, & J. Lewis (Eds.), The social origins of language. Oxford University Press.
● Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard
University Press.
• Watts, I. (2014). The red thread: Pigment use and the evolution of
collective ritual. In D. Dor, C. Knight, & J. Lewis (Eds.), The social
origins of language. Oxford University Press
• Whiten, A. (1999). The evolution of imitation and culture in animals:
Toward a Darwinian ethnography. Advances in the Study of Behavior.
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annexure
31
Some more of Everett’s points:
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Homo Erectus and the Invention of Language
Everett (2017) challenges the formalist idea that grammar is the defining
feature of language, noting that grammar is both insufficient (as DNA has
grammar) and unnecessary (as non-hierarchical, non-recursive grammars exist).
Instead, he focuses on the presence of symbols and culture. He argues that
Homo erectus possessed the necessary cognitive abilities and cultural
complexity for language like:
Intelligence
Homo erectus was the smartest creature of their time, far surpassing
other apes in intellectual and cognitive abilities. While some estimate
their intelligence roughly comparable to an eight-year-old child, their
brain (averaging 950 cubic centimetres (CCS)) demonstrated advanced
organisation for survival and cognitive plasticity, enabling them to adapt to
diverse environments.
Tools
Their technological advancements provided significant evidence of
complex thought and communication:
• Oldowan tools (2.5 to 1.2 million years ago).
• Acheulean tools (1.6 million to 200,000 years ago).
• Levallois tools (primarily associated with Neanderthals but also used
by erectus). The creation of Levallois tools required correction, not
just imitation, which archaeologists believe implies the use of
language for instruction (Everett, 2017)
Art and Symbols
Evidence of symbolic thought includes:
● The Berekhat Ram "Venus", a 250,000-year-old artwork from Morocco,
a modified object that resembles a human figure and shows evidence
of red dye.
● A 750,000-year-old shell from Java with intentional indentations.
● A 750,000-year-old shell from Java with intentional indentations.
● The burial of a stone axe with a skeleton in Spain suggests that tools
themselves became symbols.
Hunting and Planning
Homo erectus were the first creatures to engage in persistence hunting,
an ability unique to humans to chase prey to exhaustion. The use of
400,000-year-old throwing and thrusting spears found in Germany
further indicates sophisticated hunting cultures, planning, and technical
training that imply language ( Everett, 2017).
Vocal Apparatus and Language
While Homo erectus had a more primitive vocal apparatus, akin to a
"talking gorilla," capable of making more muffled sounds than modern
humans, this did not preclude language. Everett states that the rapid
evolution of the human vocal apparatus began at the time of Homo erectus,
with language providing the best explanation for this development. He
notes that languages can function with very few sounds, even a binary
system (like a computer) or a small set of vowels and consonants, as seen in
languages like Pirahã or Rotokas (11-14 sounds). The ability to distinguish
sounds is more critical than the range of sounds (Everett, 2008).
Planned Settlements
The discovery of an erectus settlement in Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel,
shows distinct areas for plant processing, meat processing, and general
living. This organisation demonstrates planning and hierarchical thinking.
Ocean Travel
Most intriguing, Everett (2017) highlights overwhelming evidence that
Homo erectus undertook ocean voyages, reaching islands such as Flores,
Socotra, and Crete 750,000 years ago, which were not connected by land.
This required sturdy crafts and a significant founding population, making
accidental washing ashore highly improbable. Such seafaring implies
advanced planning, organisation, and complex communication beyond
non-linguistic methods.
Culture and Language Complexity
Everett (2012) defines culture as an abstract network shaping and
connecting social roles, hierarchically structured knowledge domains, and
ranked values. He argues that culture and language are symbiotic,
emerging together and strengthening each other. The presence of culture
is a prerequisite for symbols and, therefore, language.
Language Complexity and Cultural Evolution
Regarding grammatical complexity, Everett describes three types of language:
G1 languages
Have symbols in linear order, like "eat drink man woman".
G2 languages
Possess hierarchical structure.
G3 languages
Exhibit recursion, the ability to embed sentences or phrases within
each other (e.g., "Bill said that I saw John who then saw Mary").
Recursion, while common and an effective tool for managing
complex information, is not essential for language itself but for
thought (Everett, 2012).
Few more ideas
proposed at the social
origin of language
workshop
39
Preconditions for Language: Cooperation and Trust
● If humans had the cognitive capacity, why didn't language evolve earlier in
apes?
● Human societies differ fundamentally from primate societies:
Apes and Monkeys
Apes and monkeys rely on dominance through violence, which undermines
trust. So, the race of being an alpha was a barrier in the path of language.
Humans
Whereas humans developed egalitarian, cooperative social systems where
prestige was earned through contribution to group welfare (Henrich & Gil-
White, 2001).
● Humans differ from other primates by inhabiting a symbolic culture,
as we live by abstract institutional facts like morals, money, kinship,
rituals, and gods, etc., rather than brute facts like core biological
and physical and physical experiences alone (Searle, 1995).
● Things that are known to be false yet socially true because these are
mere shared
● Language is fictions shaping
inseparable our this
from realities.
symbolic order, because it is the
medium through which symbolic fictions are created and maintained
(Knight, 2014).
● Language is part of this symbolic package as it requires trust in shared
conventions and works only in societies where people already accept
collective fictions (Knight, 2014).
● Therefore, language is not separate from symbolic culture but its natural
outcome of it.
Social and Ritual Foundations of Symbolism
Rituals, collective play, music, and dance were key precursors to symbolic
communication.
● Power (2014) argues that ritual practices and social revolutions against
primate-style male dominance created the unique social conditions
necessary for the emergence of language.
● Language, in her view, is deeply tied to egalitarianism, cooperation, and
symbolic ritual rather than being a mere genetic endowment.
● Examples include collective childcare, cooperative hunting, and food
sharing, which required communication based on reliability and mutual
understanding.
● And as long as humans lived under strict primate-style dominance,
language could not have evolved.
● Ian Watts (2014) shows archaeological evidence of red ochre use (a natural
clay earth pigment that is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of
clay and sand) for early symbolic culture.
● Which is one of the earliest archaeological markers of symbolism often
used in rituals to symbolise fertility and female coalition.
● He claimed that the archaeological record of ritual practices, especially
ochre use and symbolic display marks, reflects the social and cultural
conditions that made language possible.
● As ritual acted as a communal bonding mechanism, helping humans
overcome dominance hierarchies.
Watts proposed a two-stage model:
1. Early Stage (at least 500,000 years ago):
● Signs of ritual practices appear (e.g., use of red ochre).
● These suggest symbolic signalling, especially connected with fertility
and female coalitions.
2. Later Stage (150,000–200,000 years ago):
A. A final increase in brain size (encephalization).
B. Emergence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Africa.
C. Stabilization of ritualized practices, symbolic communication, and
eventually language as a trust-based system.
● Such symbolic practices created the social trust system required for
linguistic traditions to emerge and stabilise.
Language as a Bio-cultural Niche
Traditional Neo-Darwinism
Traditional Neo-Darwinism viewed evolution as driven by genes as
replicators (Dawkins, 1976).
Niche Construction Theory
But Niche Construction Theory (Odling-Smee, Laland & Feldman, 2003)
shows organisms also shape their environments, which feed back into
evolution (e.g., beavers' dams, termite mounds).
● Organisms don't just adapt to their environment, they actively change it, and
this changed environment then influences their own evolution. It's a two-
way street, not a one-way path where the environment is the only driving
force.
● Humans extend this idea through symbolic and cultural niches, which
transform cognition.
● Like a beaver's dam, language is both product and producer of evolution:
1. It organizes social life and culture (Durkheim, 1912).
2. It reshapes cognition (Vygotsky, 1978).
● Sinha (2014) stresses upon a phenomenon called epigenesis, where traits
emerge from the interaction between genes and environment, not genes
alone (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005).
● He introduces pheno-genotype: the unit of replication is not just the
genome but the organism-in-its-niche (a fusion of biological, social, and
symbolic factors). (Sinha, 2014).
● This explains why humans can flexibly acquire any natural language without
needing a "hardwired" universal grammar.
● Hence, Sinha (2014) highlights the dual ontology of language: both biological
(cognitive) and cultural (social).
● This makes language a bio-cultural phenomenon embedded in the human
semiosphere (Lotman, 1990).
● Hence, human uniqueness lies not in a gene for grammar, but in our ability to
construct symbolic niches and live in a semiosphere that transforms cognition
and society (Sinha, 2014).
Collective Innovation and Cultural Evolution
● Language was not invented by individuals but collectively constructed (Dor &
Jablonka, 2014).
● As we can't say that there was one particular person in whom 1st language
emerged and then it passed from him to his offspring.
● Dor & Jablonka (2014) criticized the gene-first model of the nativists, which claims
that language emerged because genetic mutations produced a "language
faculty.“
● As Human cultural practices like tools, norms, institutions, etc., evolve much
faster than genes, and though primates had a complex communication system,
only humans developed grammar.
● Features such as mimetic gestures, shared childcare, fire control,
cooperative hunting, and gender-based coalitions (Power, [Link] 2014)
provided the social ecology for language to grow.
● Dor (2015) argues that language is best understood as a socially constructed
technology of communication, invented and developed by humans like
writing, the telephone, or the internet.
● Unlike other communication systems, language's unique power lies in its
ability to instruct and shape the imagination of others, and is not just about
sharing experiences.
● The instructive strategy of language (Dor, 2014)—guiding others to imagine
one's meaning—requires trust and shared understanding, achievable only in
cooperative groups.
Thank you