To do this, they would have to have our brains. Time after time, in sorting through the countless proposals put forward by language evolutionists, Deacon makes the right choices. But these problems lie at the heart of language evolution. 6 Even such a dogmatic Darwinist as Richard Dawkins, England's most influential evolutionary biologist, finds it impossible to explain the origin of human language. My clear example is language.
Nobody knows how it began. . . .
I am biased towards thinking it was gradual, but it is not quite obvious that it had to be. Some people think it began suddenly, more or less invented by a single genius in a particular place at a particular time. Our distinguished British evolutionist here is coming close to a Biblical perspective, though he undoubtedly would indignantly repudiate any such suggestion. But Philip Lieberman even feels constrained to use Biblical terminology as he concludes his own wistful treatment of this subject. For with speech came a capacity for thought that had never existed before, and that has transformed the world.