ABSTRACT
Considering humans probably diverged from Great Apes some 6,000,000 years ago, we gained language relatively recently, probably about 70,000 years ago. This was roughly when humans expanded into new territories, developed cultural capacities such as cave painting, and were becoming the last surviving hominid, with the demise of the Neanderthal. Most evolutionary theories suggest that humans achieved their success at least partly through social solidarity and communication skills. Dunbar (2011), from an evolutionary perspective, has argued that language helped ensure group unity when human group sizes increased so much that the mechanisms for ensuring group cohesion seen in other primates, like physical grooming, no longer worked. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that language allowed social conventions and information to be stored in group consciousness, maybe via chants, songs and stories, allowing humans to transmit culture and, for example, pass on information across generations, such as about plant species, hunting skills and seasonal changes, as well as cultural and religious conventions.
