The book addresses questions such as the following:
- What unique social conditions led to the emergence of the first protosyllables and protowords?
- What steps enabled the crossing of the “linguistic Rubicon” (between animal communication and human speech)?
- Why were syllables and phonemes needed?
- How did our ancestors overcome the difficulties of misunderstanding?
- How, when, and why did ancient people learn to speak in turns? Why did they begin to talk about past and distant events?
- What is consciousness and how did it evolve along with language?
- How many original languages were there and why are there roughly 200 philas (language macrofamilies)?
- How and why did the number of languages and the degree of their complexity change in pre-written history?
- Did the Romance languages really evolve from Latin?
Accordingly, the book will appeal to scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the cognitive aspects of anthropogenesis and the ancient origins of language and consciousness.
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