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Archeology and the language-ready brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Benoît Dubreuil  and
Christopher Stuart Henshilwood
Benoît Dubreuil
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada; University of Bergen, Norway & University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa E-mail: benoitdubreuil@hotmail.com
Christopher Stuart Henshilwood
Affiliation:
University of Bergen, Norway & University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. E-mail: christopher.henshilwood@ahkr.uib.no
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Abstract

In this book, Michael Arbib presents a most interesting and comprehensive account of the evolution of language. The work is both impressive and convincing in its description of how the language-ready brain evolved and how languages emerged through cultural evolution. As we are in broad agreement with Arbib's evolutionary story at the neurocognitive level, we focus on an underdeveloped part of his argument: when did language evolve in the human lineage? How does Arbib's neurocognitive argument connect with what archeology teaches us about human evolution?

Type
The perspective from archeology
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 5 , Issue 2-3: Special Issue , September 2013 , pp. 251 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2013

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