Introduction: perspectives on the evolution of language in Africa

Abstract Africa was the cradle of language, mind, and culture. Until recently, the evidence for this remained little known. The prevailing ‘‘human revolution’’ theory saw modern language and cognition emerging suddenly and nearly simultaneously throughout the Old World some 40 to 50 thousand years ago. This ‘‘Great Leap Forward’’ for humanity (Diamond 1992) was depicted as a cognitive transition based on a neural mutation yielding syntax and hence true language (Klein 1995, 2000; Tattersall 1995). When modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa some 200,000–150,000 years ago, according to this theory, our ancestors were modern only ‘‘anatomically’’; mentally and behaviorally, they remained archaic. Only when such humans began migrating out of Africa—triggering the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe—did the ‘‘leap’’ to cognitive and behavioral modernity occur.