The origins of language with Cat Hobaiter Festival of Languages - Pay what you can £6 or £4
A long list of human behaviours has been proposed as the reason we have language, but decades of research with other species have shown us that they have rich systems of flexible, intentional, meaningful communication and that they do not need language to learn from each other, to organise where and when to forage, to share cultural knowledge about tools and songs, to coordinate hunting, or navigate social politics and it starts to look like human language didn't evolve for anything very useful at all.
In this round table led by primatologist Cat Hobaiter, we will talk about what we have learned about the origins of language by working with humans and other animals, and ask, at the end of the day, what is communication really for?