But the reason that humans communicate with strings of words rather than grunts can now be explained. The answer lies not in linguistics but mathematics. In the past year, a leap in understanding the architecture of language has come from evolutionary game theory, a field pioneered in Britain by John Maynard Smith and Bill Hamilton, who died last month. The field combines the evolutionary insights of Charles Darwin with the mathematical analysis of games pioneered by the computer pioneer John von Neumann in the Twenties. Game theory analyses successful strategies when the outcome is uncertain and, crucially, depends on the behaviour of others.
Language is a game for more than one player.
Professor Martin Nowak of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, believes evolutionary game theory can provide insights into its origins between seven million years ago, when we shared our last common ancestor with chimps, and the emergence of anatomically modern humans 150,000 years ago. Using a computer, it is even possible to show how an eye evolved from a primitive light-sensitive cell. Yet when it comes to language, many linguists, biologists and philosophers have difficulty in imagining how it could have arisen through evolutionary forces. Sure, language emerged because it helped our ancestors to share information crucial to survival. But, as Prof Steven Pinker of MIT explains in the latest issue of Nature, such explanations seem glib.