A key piece of Mithen’s jigsaw is the divergence of hominids and chimpanzees. Fossil evidence of variations in brain size and vocal tract shape between Homo sapiens, Neanderthal man, Homo erectus and so on down the family tree allows for the speculative dating of some of those linguistic leaps. Mithen is especially good at describing humankind’s differentiation and migration over the last three million years, and this early chapter is a tour de force of terse, fascinating clarity.
The same cannot be said of all of them, unfortunately. In Mithen’s jigsaw there are a lot of specialist disciplines that necessarily need to be unpacked for the general reader. Sometimes, however, he provides more detail than we subsequently need. “The Language Puzzle” contains many memorable passages, but I will struggle to recall exactly how nucleotides model proteins, or the precise distinctions between the hand tools of the Lower Paleolithic period.
Occasionally, one senses that the puzzle pieces have been clipped slightly or jammed in to fit the picture; many of these disciplines have not settled into consensus to quite the extent that the author suggests.
Take the idea of sound symbolism, the proposition that certain sounds in words have a non-arbitrary relationship to their meaning: the onomatopoeia. Certainly this idea, discredited for most of the 20th century, now has a significant body of well-evidenced support. Nevertheless, if one were to ask a straw poll of academic linguists how seriously they take sound symbolism, one would find that the matter is by no means as unanimously resolved as Mithen needs it to be. But by and large, he is an honest commentator.
Mithen is not averse to taking sides in debates that are still open. Phrases like “I am aligned with” or “in my opinion” pepper the text. As a consequence, the picture revealed in the final chapter is only a hypothetical one — “my best shot,” as Mithen puts it. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable, vivid set piece: a montage that runs from the barks and coos of forest-dwelling primates to the grammatical written language you are reading now.
No doubt, aspects of Mithen’s picture will need to be redrawn. It is, by his own admission, only the snapshot of a moment in a debate that will continue as the underlying sciences come into greater definition. Thankfully, this time the learned societies of Paris will not forbid the discussion from continuing.
THE LANGUAGE PUZZLE: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved | By Steven Mithen | Basic Books | 534 pp. | $36
