A groundbreaking new account of prehistory from one of the most esteemed archaeologists working today

'A tour de force' Alice Roberts 'Wonderful ... A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share - language' Robin Dunbar The relationship between language, thought and culture is of concern to anyone with an interest in what it means to be human. The Language Puzzle explains how the invention of words at 1.6 million years ago began the evolution of human language from the ape-like calls of our earliest ancestors to our capabilities of today, with over 6000 languages in the world and each of us knowing over 50,000 words. Drawing on the latest discoveries in archaeology, linguistics, psychology, and genetics, Steven Mithen reconstructs the steps by which language evolved; he explains how it transformed the nature of thought and culture, and how we talked our way out of the Stone Age into the world of farming and swiftly into today's Digital Age. While this radical new work is not shy to reject outdated ideas about language, it builds bridges between disciplines to forge a new synthesis for the evolution of language that will find widespread acceptance as a new standard account for how humanity began.

"A fascinating history of ideas and a masterful synthesis of the latest insights from linguistics, archaeology, genetics, neuroscience and AI - providing us with a compelling theory of the evolution of language. The Language Puzzle is a tour de force" - Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

"An epic achievement that, more than any other book out there, rises to the challenge of elucidating the immense complexity that underpinned the emergence and evolution of human language ... keeps the reader deliciously hanging on" - The Fossil Chronicles

"A remarkably comprehensive biography of the single most important thing we all share - language - written with Mithen's wonderful ability to combine deep insights with a story engagingly told" - Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships

"An authoritative, dense yet accessible synthesis, The Language Puzzle is a superbly up-to-date guide to the complex and variegated evolution of language. Encompassing a huge and multidisciplinary scope of knowledge and covering some 5 million years, this fascinating book shows that asking how and why we came to speak also means exploring what it is to be human" - Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

"Praise for The Singing Neanderthals: 'Illuminating and thought-provoking" - The Times

"The most perspicacious portrait of the role of communication among our remote predecessors that I have ever encountered ... A landmark book" - New York Review of Books

"Wonderfully evocative ... A highly original view of our musical origins" - Guardian