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Scientists Think Campfires May Have Helped Humans Invent Language. Here’s Why.

Researchers theorize that firelight, storytelling and shared attention may have helped push human communication beyond basic survival signals.

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Humans sitting around a campfire, telling stories, spooky or otherwise, may have been just the evolutionary shot in the arm our ability to convey knowledge and experience with language needed to evolve to where it is today, as researchers theorize in a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The researchers suggest that the traditional narrative of human language evolving because we had to coordinate mammoth hunts and teach kids the basics of survival isn’t unique to humans. Plenty of examples show creatures communicating survivalist ideas nonverbally throughout the animal kingdom. For example, chimpanzees coordinate complex group hunts........

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