The Talking Book

Book excerpt: Are you ready to solve one of the world’s biggest mysteries: how we talk? The story of communication begins in prehistoric times, gallops through the dark arts, untranslatable words and languages brought back from the dead, and arrives in the age of AI. Along the way, we meet outstanding characters—the one-word man, the 400-word monkey and the million-word computer—who play their part in the development of language. Every tale in this book holds a clue to the gigantic puzzle of the evolution of language that has hypnotized brilliant minds over time. Handprints of not-quite-humans on ancient cave walls, secrets buried in ash from a seven-year-long winter, forbidden experiments by kings on babies and even a rogue gene hiding in your DNA—how do they all piece together? WARNING: Enjoy the rollercoaster ride of language, hilarious histories and crazy quizzes, but ignore the wise-cracking dog who will insist he wrote this book.