Lecture: Keynote: How can we know about the language of our ancestors? An exposé of the global history of language
Gerd Carling
Humans have communicated by language for thousands of years, maybe more. It is even likely that our earliest human-like ancestors, the Homo habilis more than 1,5 million years ago, used some language-like communication when they migrated from Africa all over the globe. What we know is that the more than 7,500 human languages display a considerable diversity. But how did this diversity once emerge? And what can this diversity tell us about the language of the earliest humans or the language of our ancestors before the earliest written records? We know that language is a highly powerful trait–it gives us a huge evolutionary advantage. It revolutionizes our ways to communicate and enables us to solve complicated tasks as a community. Even more so, when the invention of writing is added to the common pool of knowledge, the possibility to store, communicate and use our common knowledge increases even further.
The lecture will overview the methods for reconstructing language beyond (and after) the written period, beginning with our earliest ancestors, and continuing over to the Palaeolithic hunter-and-gatherers
model for reconstruction of the almost 500 families of human language. The evolution of language will be viewed from the angel of cultural evolution, trying to respond to the important questions of where, why and how of human language.
Info
Day:
2023-05-27
Start time:
17:00
Duration:
01:00
Room:
SKW B
Links:
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