ABSTRACT
Language is a very efficient tool for transmitting knowledge, from one person to another, down the generations. Dolphins transmit knowledge, wolves too, chimps, orangutans. In humans, though, the ability to teach down the generations, and to build on it, is unique. Increasingly complex knowledge, skills and technology mean that in the past few thousand years, humans have developed agriculture, mathematics, engineering and science to such a level that we can send people into space, communicate over thousands of miles instantaneously, produce medicines to defeat disease, split atoms to release vast amounts of energy. There are people who believe that the advance of technology will, ultimately, destroy the human race, taking other species with it as well; there are some who believe that technology will lead to space travel, immortality, and enlightenment. However we judge the term progress, it is language that is at the heart of this human capacity for learning over time.
