All branches of science search for origins. Biologists want to
know how life on earth began. Astronomers want to know how the universe got started. Even in mathematics, questions about how different numerical systems came to be constitute a legitimate line of inquiry.
Chimpanzees and bonobos can communicate with greater flexibility
using hand gestures than they can with facial expressions or vocalizations, new research shows. Their use of hand motions to convey different meanings in different circumstances suggests that gestures may have played an important part in the evolution of language.
Using an ingenious approach involving virtual robots that possess
evolvable genomes, researchers have identified key factors that may play important roles in determining the manner in which communication arises during the evolution of social organisms.
When unwanted email first came along, people invented different
words for it, such as unsolicited email and junk email. But eventually 'spam' became the word of choice to describe the phenomenon.
The complexities of modern human language only evolved once we had interesting things to talk about, and found out how to do so in an abstract way. Henry Gee musters his morphemes.