Includes bibliographical references (pages [304]-364) and index.
Introduction : perspectives on the evolution of language in Africa / Chris Knight -- Earliest personal ornaments and their significance for the origin of language debate / Francesco d'Errico and Marian Vanhaeren -- Reading the artifacts : gleaning language skills from the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa / Christopher Stuart Henshilwood and Benoît Dubreuil -- Red ochre, body painting, and language : interpreting the Blombos ochre / Ian Watts -- Theoretical underpinnings of inferences about language evolution : the syntax used at Blombos Cave / Rudolf Botha -- Fossil cues to the evolution of speech / W. Tecumseh Fitch -- Evidence against a genetic-based revolution in language 50,000 years ago / Karl C. Diller and Rebecca L. Cann -- A "language-free" explanation for differences between the European Middle and Upper Paleolithic record / Wil Roebroeks and Alexander Verpoorte -- Diversity in languages, genes, and the language faculty / James R. Hurford and Dan Dediu -- How varied typologically are the languages of Africa? / Michael Cysouw and Bernard Comrie -- What click languages can and can't tell us about language origins / Bonny Sands and Tom Güldemann -- Social origins : sharing, exchange, kinship / Alan Barnard -- As well as words : Congo Pygmy hunting, mimicry, and play / Jerome Lewis -- Sexual selection models for the emergence of symbolic communication : why they should be reversed / Camilla Power -- Language, ochre, and the rule of law / Chris Knight