Between skeptics and adaptationists: new prospects for human language evolution.

The debate on human language evolution is crystallizing around a diatribe that is likely to be sterile, between skeptics (well represented by a provocative recent paper by Hauser et al.) and adaptationists convinced that language is just an instinct or a modulus gradually evolved by natural selection as an “adaptation for” general functions of communication. In this paper we will critically analyze both positions and we will propose two cases as examples of a possible “third way”. In order to avoid this dichotomous impasse, we need to consider that now in the field we can count on an updated theory of evolution, an extended Neo-Darwinism more pluralistic in its explanatory patterns (ignored by both contenders), and on the enlargement of the empirical basis of evolutionary hypotheses, namely through the convergence of molecular, morphological, ecological and biogeographic data. With reference to the natural history of typically human language in strict sense, the “South African Final Wave” model and the “cascade of exaptations” model could be two promising applications of an updated theory of evolution. Such cases will be presented and discussed.