Culture First Word Problems

By the time humans began to write, about 5,000 years ago, the spoken word was more than a million years old. Sadly, the history of those early grunts is lost. What do we know, and how? A new book pulls together science, psychology and biology to tell an intriguing tale

- Bhanuj Kappal

They're among the greatest magic spells we have in the real world: words. (Among the others on our list: hugs, fireworks, Christmas.) But back to words, how do a few sounds convey the idea of a golden day dying in an orange sunset; or the quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog (with all that implies)? How did we get to the point where we can use these spells to craft riddles, elicit tears, evoke a laugh or a memory? Command an army, or get a team to meet a deadline?

The sad truth is that most of the history of the spoken word is lost.

All we have are tantalising hints: human fossils indicating changes in the brain and vocal tract; archaeological finds ranging from tools to symbols.

Amid new scientific breakthroughs in biology, psychology and linguistics, it is now generally believed that the first word-like sounds were uttered by early-human ancestors, about 6 million years ago. Rudimentary human speech is believed to date back 1.6 million years.

What does the trail look like from there on? Archaeologist Steven Mithen spent four years hunting for answers, and the result is his 2024 book, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved.

A professor of early prehistory at University of Reading, Mithen's previous books have explored the evolutions of music, culture and creativity.