"Babel's Dawn is a saga covering six million years. Like a walk through a natural history museum, Edmund Blair Bolles demonstrates how members of the human lineage came to speak. Beginning with a diorama of the last common ancestor ignoring a bird as it flies by, he guides us through generations, illuminating how it became possible for two Homo sapiens not only to acknowledge the songbird, but also to discuss the meaning of its song. Tracing the rise of voluntary vocalizations as well as the first word, phrases, and sentences, Bolles works against the common belief that the reason apes cannot speak is they are not smart enough. In this groundbreaking work, Bolles proposes that we now have substantial evidence that this age-old idea can no longer stand. With concrete portrayals of living individuals interwoven with evidence, data, and theory, Babel's Dawn is a powerful account of a great scientific revolution."--P. [2] of jacket.