Language Evolved To Ensure Human Beings Cooperated, And We Might Be Screwed

Watch biologist Mark Pagel explain why humans’ capacity for “cumulative cultural adaptation” or social learning is what makes us so unique, and how language emerged as a way for our ancestors to protect their best ideas. Instead of just watching what other do, language ensured that human beings would have to cooperate to survive. (I wonder what he would say about computational languages, given what he notes about CDs and DVDs.)