Cognitive fire: Language as a cultural tool

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• Tuesday 10 November 2009
• 7.00pm-8.30pm
• Lecturers: Prof Daniel Everett

This event is now open for non-members to buy guest tickets, without being accompanied by a member.

This is a great opportunity for non-members to get a taste of the exciting programme of events for members and to be part of an audience of like-minded individuals with a passion for science.

Did human language originate with Homo sapiens, or with pre-human hominids huddled around fires on the African savannah prior to the evolution of the genus Homo? Is modern human speech a special instinct or capacity that humans are born with that suddenly appeared less than 200,000 years ago, or is human speech itself the result of human anatomy catching up to human cultural needs and values? Daniel Everett, on his return from the Amazon jungle where he lived with the Pirahã indigenous tribe for 30 years, makes the case that language is, like fire, a tool and is universally needed. As fire solves the problem of warmth, safety and cooking, language solves the problem of communication.

He examines the basic components of communication, the origin and nature of the universal human desire to interact with other humans, and how proto-language could have begun without the capacity to make speech sounds as we know them today. The idea that language and culture form an indivisible whole and that there is no need for baroque ideas of universal grammar or a language instinct helps us understand the variation among the nearly 7,000 languages spoken in the world today.

This idea leads to a greater urgency to documenting and preserving endangered languages. The loss of any language is the irretrievable loss of knowledge and ways of being that Google will never be able to replace.

This event is free to Ri Full Members, £10 for Associate Members and £15 for guests.

To become a member of the Ri please visit http://www.rigb.org/membership or call 020 7670 2919.