The new linguistic skills that modern Sapiens acquired about seventy millennia ago enabled them to gossip for hours on end. Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, and Sapiens could develop tighter and more sophisticated types of cooperation.1 The gossip theory might sound like a joke,

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And humans? We’re no different - only more complex. Our language was born to bind us together, to keep us alive. At first it was a rhythm between mouths and bodies reading danger before thought had time to form. A tone that soothed an infant, a touch that softened the pulse, scents that signalled safety or threat. The first words were likely sounds

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We’ll never know exactly how these early hominids communicated, but it is obvious that they did. It is certain that they handed down experiences and knowledge, aided by facial gestures and vocal sounds. In this way, mimesis would eventually have led speech to emerge as the dominant mode of communication.