Steven Roger Fischer charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, as he analyses the emergence of language as a science and its development as a written form.

Table of Contents

• Preface to the New Edition
• Foreword
• 1: Animal Communication and ‘Language’
• 2: Talking Apes
• 3: First Families
• 4: Written Language
• 5: Lineages
• 6: Towards a Science of Language
• 7: Society and Language
• 8: Future Indicative
• Select Bibliography