ABSTRACT
The basic underlying capacity to understand and use language was hard-wired millions of years ago in great apes. Then, over the last five to six million years after the split of hominins from the last common ancestor to present-day chimpanzees, natural selection initially worked on the subcortical areas of the hominin brain to enhance emotional capacities into a gestural/emotional language in order to forge stronger social bonds and, thus, more stable groups. This chapter traces the origins and development of language as it evolved from the primal language of emotions.
