Provost Lecture: Mark Pagel - The Evolution of Human Languages

The Evolution of Human
Languages: An Evolutionary
Biologist’s Perspective
Mark Pagel, a professor of evolutionary biology at
Reading University, U.K., and a Fellow of the Royal
Society, is one of the world’s most distinguished
evolutionary biologists. He has made significant
contributions to our understanding of how to
construct evolutionary trees and has applied these
accomplishments to understanding the evolution
of languages. His book Wired for Culture: Origins
of the Human Social Mind (W.W. Norton) was
named one of 2012’s best science books by
The Guardian. Human beings speak approximately
7,000 mutually unintelligible languages around
the world, giving our species the curious
distinction that most of us cannot understand what
most other people are saying. Pagel will explore the
origins of our unique language capability, ask
whether any other species could speak, and
highlight the remarkable features of language that
allow it to evolve and adapt much like genes do,
meaning we can trace its evolution back thousands
of years into our past.