STEVEN MITHEN

A tour de force Alice Roberts Wonderful A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share language Robin DunbarThe relationship between language thought and culture is of concern to anyone with an interest in what it means to be human The Language Puzzle explains how the invention of words at 1 6 million years ago began the evolution of human language from the ape like calls of our earliest ancestors to our capabilities of today with over 6000 languages in the world and each of us knowing over 50 000 words Drawing on the latest discoveries in archaeology linguistics psychology and genetics Steven Mithen reconstructs the steps by which language evolved he explains how it transformed the nature of thought and culture and how we talked our way out of the Stone Age into the world of farming and swiftly into today s Digital Age While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a new standard account for how humanity began

As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the islands people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky the industry for which the island is best known today. Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.

La aparición y el desarrollo del lenguaje es un elemento clave en la historia de la vida sobre la Tierra. Es cierto que no existe un acuerdo generalizado sobre sus orígenes, pero, en todo caso, el lenguaje nos permite comunicar ideas de todo tipo, desde la mas mundana hasta la mas abstracta. Ahora bien, intimamente asociado al lenguaje esta la musica, cuyas raices y desarrollo apenas han sido estudiados. ¿Posee su aparicion algun significado desde el punto de vista de la evolucion de las especies? En Los neandertales cantaban rap Steven Mithen establece las bases cientificas de la nocion popular de musica como el lenguaje de la emocion. Uniendo evidencias de todo tipo –como datos antropologicos, analisis de los sistemas de comunicacion utilizados en la vida salvaje (los de gorilas, bonobos, chimpances, cercopitecos o gibones), bases neurologicas de la musica y del lenguaje, Mithen logra componer un cuadro tan impresionante como fascinante que muestra las profundas similitudes que existen entre y el lenguaje y la musica, y por que esta desempeña un papel tan importante en nuestras vidas.