Evolution’s great mystery - Michael Corballis

Evolution’s great mystery - Michael Corballis In the 1980s a bonobo named kanji learned to communicate with humans to an unprecedented extent, not through speech or gestures but using a keyboard of abstract symbols representing objects and actions by pointing to several of these in the order he created sequences to make requests answer verbal questions from human researchers and refer to objects that weren't physically present kansi's exploits ignited immediate controversy over one question had kanzi learned language what we call language is something more specific than communication language is about sharing what's in our minds stories opinions questions the past or future imagined times or places ideas it is fundamentally open-ended and can be used to say an unlimited number of things many researchers are convinced that only humans have language that the calls and gestures other species use to communicate are not language each of these calls and gestures generally corres...