ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several major problems that the new synthesis of human evolution has yet to resolve. It proposes that the augmentation of pre-existing gestural language by spoken language provided a quantum leap in communicative ability. The only way to avoid gesturing is to read the presentation, but reading itself is clearly a very recent artifice, and certainly not something humans in any sense evolved to do. A lecture is something very different from and much more natural than a written-out talk. Lecturers generally accompany their words with gestures, and indeed many, perhaps most, are incapable of delivering a lecture unaccompanied by gestures. If parents are aware and interested, deaf children will get responses to their first signs, and parents and children will go on to develop their own language.
