The Dawn of Language

An elegant intellectual thriller . . . A model of popular-science writing in its imperturbable, reasonable weighing of competing ideas . . . [A] fascinating story in its own right -- Steven Poole * Guardian * Popular science of the highest order. All the necessary ingredients are there: a well-read author, an educational mindset and good, fluent prose. * Svenska Dagbladet * A formidable educational journey . . . This is the book the linguists have needed for so long. * Expressen * Johansson writes with enthusiasm and a desire to impart his knowledge . . . The delight is contagious. * Sprktidningen * A fascinating overview of human language * Smlandsposten * Women are central to the story of how humans began to use language, at least according to the fascinating hypothesis advanced by Swedish scientist Sverker Johansson in his magisterial The Dawn of Language . . . but there are many other twists and turns in this detective story of the deep past. * Telegraph * I love a book that teaches me things I didn't know while provoking in me thoughts I never had before, setting my mind racing in new directions. Such a book is The Dawn of Language by Sverker Johansson -- Richard Dawkins A very well-researched and persuasive work on how evolution shaped pre-human development, and our precursors' role in externalising language and bringing it into the world. -- Graham Elliott * The Linguist *

SVERKER JOHANSSON, Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Master of Philosophy in Linguistics, was born 1961 in Lund in the southern parts of Sweden. He is a senior advisor at Dalarna University, has conducted research at CERN in Switzerland and participated in EVOLANG, the leading international conference for research on the origins and evolution of language, since 2006. Through a bot that he programmed, Lsjbot, Johansson is behind an estimated 8% of all articles on Swedish Wikipedia, covering everything from fungi to municipalities in the Philippines.