Early hominins who sailed across oceans left indirect evidence that they might have been the first to use language

In the past, when trying to explain how our ancestors developed, we have often focused on a source of energy or a physical technology that aided their progress – for example, the invention of the wheel, the discovery of coal or the arrival of the plough. But what about the social technologies that helped organise us in pursuit of common goals by en

The ability to act as a coordinated group would be an enormous advantage: to specialize, to stake out and guard territory, to learn from one another. Think of human societies during the ice age: massive environmental pressures forced innovation, forcing them to master cooperative strategies to bring down big megafauna for sustenance, and in turn th

What was the Sapiens’ secret of success? How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion? Why couldn’t even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage. The most likely answer is the very thing tha

They maintain that the people who drove the Neanderthals to extinction, settled Australia, and carved the Stadel lion-man were as intelligent, creative and sensitive as we are. If we were to come across the artists of the Stadel Cave, we could learn their language and they ours. We’d be able to explain to them everything we know – from the adventur

Language, we can say with some confidence, was the greatest “technological” breakthrough of the Upper Pleistocene. It gave rise to a vastly more complex social life, a societal memory of cultural advances conveyed by word of mouth across generations, and a growing division of labor within society.