All animals communicate, but language is uniquely human.
So why us? Why only humans?
In this, the first lecture from the 2019 Glasgow Gifford Lecture series, Mark Pagel will show how human languages evolve very much like biological species and even adapt to their hosts – human speakers.
Professor Pagel asks why only humans have language, how language helped us spread across the world, why there are so many languages, and of course – what does the future hold for language.
Mark Pagel is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Reading University in the UK
The Glasgow Gifford Lecture Lecture series was established by Adam Lord Gifford in the 19th Century as a bequest to the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen. To be delivered by pre-eminent thinkers in their fields, the first was given in 1888.
These four lectures were delivered in October 2019 at the University of Glasgow.
- Paul Barclay, presenter
- Damian Rabbitt, producer