Language and HumanityGood morning, everyone.In today's lecture, we're going to discuss the relationship between language and humanity. As we all know, language is very powerful.It allows you to put a thought from your mind directly in someone else's mind.Languages are like genes talking, getting things they want.And you just imagine the sense of wonder in a baby when it first discovers that, merely by uttering a sound, it can get objects to move across a room as if by magic, and maybe even into its mouth.Now we need to explain how and why this remarkable trait, you know, human's ability to do things with language, has evolved, and why did this trait evolve only in our species?In order to get an answer to the question, we have to go to tool use in the chimpanzees.Chimpanzees can use tools, and we take that phenomenon as a sign of their intelligence.But if they really were intelligent, why would they crack open nuts with a rock?Why wouldn't they just go to a shop and buy a bag of nuts that somebody else had already cracked open for them?Why not? I mean, that's what we do.
