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The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind
This challenging and wide-ranging investigation into the evolution of the human mind shows how the development of language in man's ancestors led to an explosion of his mental abilities
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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July 24, 2009
McCrone begins with two assumptions: that "self-consciousness must have a biological basis" and that the mind evolved.
Language is one of the defining human characteristics; indeed it is language that has permitted our species to learn how to control the environment around us rather than being forced to adapt to it. Language permitted self-awareness and self-consciousness.
Being intelligent is hard work. The brain uses about one fifth of the oxygen intake even though it's only about one fiftieth of the body's weight. During the climatic changes of the Miocene era some 10 million years ago, the apes which had flourished in the rich forest environment were forced to adopt a land-gait and leave the trees. Most of the ape lines became extinct, a process almost completed today; they had reached an evolutionary dead-end. Only the human line of apes survived. Because two-legged movement is not as efficient, nor as fast as four-legged, these strange upright ancestors of ours developed social organizations for the common defense (also a characteristic of the few remaining apes like baboons and chimps.) Still, this alone was not enough for several early hominid lines became extinct, unsuccessful experiments of God.
The Australopithecines, with strong jaw for chewing up the tough roots and plants of its diet disappeared with the advent of the colder ice age. Our direct ancestors, with smaller jaw, a more varied diet, and the ability to cook, were better suited to adapt to the change in environment. The last 3,000,000 years have been dominated by the ice-age with only brief 10,000 - 20,000-year long interruptions of more temperate climates (we near the end of the most recent one now.) These periods placed terrible stress on the animals that had developed warm coats and had adapted to colder climates. Many species died out. The lightweight homo line with his intelligence and flexible diet was again successful. Another advantage was food-sharing -- almost unique to humans -- and pair bonding. But language, appearing it is thought with home sapiens, was to make a crucial difference. "Language paved the way for all the special abilities that we so value abilities such as self-awareness, higher emotion and personal memories."
McCrone examines how various basic mental abilities work such as thought, memory and learning, in order to appreciate the structures that language expanded.
Language is one of the defining human characteristics; indeed it is language that has permitted our species to learn how to control the environment around us rather than being forced to adapt to it. Language permitted self-awareness and self-consciousness.
Being intelligent is hard work. The brain uses about one fifth of the oxygen intake even though it's only about one fiftieth of the body's weight. During the climatic changes of the Miocene era some 10 million years ago, the apes which had flourished in the rich forest environment were forced to adopt a land-gait and leave the trees. Most of the ape lines became extinct, a process almost completed today; they had reached an evolutionary dead-end. Only the human line of apes survived. Because two-legged movement is not as efficient, nor as fast as four-legged, these strange upright ancestors of ours developed social organizations for the common defense (also a characteristic of the few remaining apes like baboons and chimps.) Still, this alone was not enough for several early hominid lines became extinct, unsuccessful experiments of God.
The Australopithecines, with strong jaw for chewing up the tough roots and plants of its diet disappeared with the advent of the colder ice age. Our direct ancestors, with smaller jaw, a more varied diet, and the ability to cook, were better suited to adapt to the change in environment. The last 3,000,000 years have been dominated by the ice-age with only brief 10,000 - 20,000-year long interruptions of more temperate climates (we near the end of the most recent one now.) These periods placed terrible stress on the animals that had developed warm coats and had adapted to colder climates. Many species died out. The lightweight homo line with his intelligence and flexible diet was again successful. Another advantage was food-sharing -- almost unique to humans -- and pair bonding. But language, appearing it is thought with home sapiens, was to make a crucial difference. "Language paved the way for all the special abilities that we so value abilities such as self-awareness, higher emotion and personal memories."
McCrone examines how various basic mental abilities work such as thought, memory and learning, in order to appreciate the structures that language expanded.
January 18, 2017
This is still an interesting read from the point of view of the development of the speech, physiology and social methods of the emerging humans. Written in 1990, though, a book full of the knowledge of the day has been overtaken by later discoveries. For instance, the author mentions that chimps are our nearest great ape relatives, but says there are contradictory traces relating to how long ago we split. Now we understand that chimps split into the line of bonobos which are more closely related to us, as well as the larger chimpanzee.
A drawing of the evolution of ape men and humans doesn't show Neanderthals, which are discussed later in the book. The author's primary focus however is on speech, and how it enabled us to co-operate better. He explains that the great apes headed down an evolutionary blind alley, having a small number of infants which had to be raised for a few years before a mother could have another infant. This enabled the rise of large brains but made them vulnerable to change or disaster. Humans, the walking apes out on the fringes of the trees, developed communication to a better degree and foraged together rather than separately, raising babies more communally and pair-bonding. Hence more babies survived and better food from cooking enabled larger brains. We get a look at various stages before the first known town, Jericho, eight thousand years old. Then, and as writing developed to record speech, information could be passed more easily and people could learn.
The development of language gave humans the tools to talk about today, yesterday, tomorrow. They could describe something and tag a word to it like boat, which creates a picture for the listener without having to drag someone to the river and point at a boat. And when we hear or read boat, what happens in our brain? The author explains the complex neural net which is still developing for a couple of years after we are born and can be reawakened by memories, or remade when we explore or learn, or rerouted after damage. We see that the more often a neuron is fired, the more it establishes a pathway in the fatty brain - like a rivulet of warm flow on a wax surface. This is undoubtedly why the habits of a lifetime are just that, and hard to alter. He also looks at synaesthesia, deja vu and the inner voice.
I enjoyed the read which would give an idea if you wanted to study this subject at more depth. We also have more case studies now of animals and humans - Leakey and Goodall are referenced but not Sapolsky. Various experiments like the upside-down glasses will raise a smile and there are a couple of visual tricks to enjoy.
A drawing of the evolution of ape men and humans doesn't show Neanderthals, which are discussed later in the book. The author's primary focus however is on speech, and how it enabled us to co-operate better. He explains that the great apes headed down an evolutionary blind alley, having a small number of infants which had to be raised for a few years before a mother could have another infant. This enabled the rise of large brains but made them vulnerable to change or disaster. Humans, the walking apes out on the fringes of the trees, developed communication to a better degree and foraged together rather than separately, raising babies more communally and pair-bonding. Hence more babies survived and better food from cooking enabled larger brains. We get a look at various stages before the first known town, Jericho, eight thousand years old. Then, and as writing developed to record speech, information could be passed more easily and people could learn.
The development of language gave humans the tools to talk about today, yesterday, tomorrow. They could describe something and tag a word to it like boat, which creates a picture for the listener without having to drag someone to the river and point at a boat. And when we hear or read boat, what happens in our brain? The author explains the complex neural net which is still developing for a couple of years after we are born and can be reawakened by memories, or remade when we explore or learn, or rerouted after damage. We see that the more often a neuron is fired, the more it establishes a pathway in the fatty brain - like a rivulet of warm flow on a wax surface. This is undoubtedly why the habits of a lifetime are just that, and hard to alter. He also looks at synaesthesia, deja vu and the inner voice.
I enjoyed the read which would give an idea if you wanted to study this subject at more depth. We also have more case studies now of animals and humans - Leakey and Goodall are referenced but not Sapolsky. Various experiments like the upside-down glasses will raise a smile and there are a couple of visual tricks to enjoy.
October 12, 2014
This was a frustrating book for me, mostly because it talked very little about the subject it was supposed to focus on. I would say even Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" did a better job showing individual language acquisition and development than this book did. There wasn't much about language at all in "The Ape That Spoke". Instead I found generalisations about the mind and inappropriate assumptions about humans being superior to all other forms of life that have existed. The author also seemed to think all of his readers would come from the same type of world as him, and that they would be able to connect with him when he talks about working in offices and having sex and going to cocktail parties and playing tennis as though those are things that every human does. There is some interesting information here, probably enough to make it worthwhile to keep the book around. In general, though, I was disappointed.
October 10, 2025
The main problem I have with this work is the lack of clear demarcations between scientific fact and scientific theory.
The author's presentation basically says, "I have read, studied and absorbed the scientific evidence, and I will now explain to you, in simpler layman's terms, the way things are."
I would have much preferred another approach, "I have read the scientific evidence, and this is what it says," cited by author and study.
"It all started with an ape that spoke." "Man became self-aware and self-possessed." Since he himself explains how the process of speaking only took 2 million years, it was not so simple or sudden a process.
So in actuality, did speaking make the human self-aware, or is it the other way around? Self-awareness, in my feeling, can be thought of in one simple way, we are aware, and then we are aware that we are aware.
A dog thinks, has a brain, pursues things that he wants, needs of finds interesting. But he is not so aware that he is doing so: he just kind-of does it. But human awareness is distinguished by a constant interaction that goes on within our brains: I do, and I observe what I have done and evaluate it. It's this evaluation of self that we call human awareness. The awareness of self, including evaluation and judgements, how did I do? Did I do well, did I do poorly? Was what I did legal or illegal? Was it ethical or unethical? This evaluation of self catapulted our human species to, literally and figuratively, to astronomical heights.
But I do not feel that speaking made humans self-aware. That sounds too much like click-bait to read my book. It sounds dramatic, yet closer to reality might be, speaking and self-awareness evolved over a long period of time, and each tended to augment the other.
But a statement like this probably wouldn't sell as many books.
The Ape that Spoke by John McCrone. An attempt to explain his theory that the critical turning point in the evolution of human beings from the ape took place when the ape developed language. Through language the animal became self-aware and thus human.
The author takes us through extraordinary and lengthy non-scientific, uncited and undocumented theories of how the brain works, presenting, as it were, simple logic to previously incomprehensible mysteries. The whole volume presents these "explanations" which one would have no reason to necessarily accept or reject, in order to set the stage for his critical thesis, that man is the ape that spoke.
But when he finally comes to that moment in his work, he is largely at a loss to present anything much more than the assertion of his theory. He can offer no real explanation for how it was to have really happened and virtually glosses over this most critical point, as if the reader, who has been lulled into acceptance by the rest of the work, will just accept it, that the reader, after swallowing so much bland porridge, will now swallow unquestioningly the poison pill.
But for some who have already made up their minds that evolution is the only (and obvious) explanation for our origins as the human species, McCrone's explanation is just about as good as any. And for the believer in God and God's creation, this is unfounded palaver and gibberish nonsense.
I found one intriguing aspect of the evolutionist's theories, and that was this: from the evolutionist's point of view, we obviously came from somewhere, say point A, and we have obviously evolved to where we are, say point P, and therefore, exactly how we traversed from point A to point P is just a matter of "filling in the blanks", and the most obvious and reasonable explanations are, as the best we can do at the time, acceptable as our "state of the art" in the matter.
This approach thus allows for acceptance in the mind of "the best we can do". I found this sort of logic hidden behind the theories the author presented and perhaps being the central driving force of his arguments. In any case, I felt utterly flabbergasted and almost betrayed when I came to his actual thesis, almost as if he had possibly conned himself into believing something and would now present it to the reader.
I am left with the unmistakable impressions of a theory totally unfounded not only scientifically, but also logically. And yet this thesis is buried in a marsh of "well intentioned" reasoning and rationalizations meant to disguise the fact that he truly has nothing to present ultimately except his assertion.
The Ape that Spoke by John McCrone. An attempt to explain his theory that the critical turning point in the evolution of human beings from the ape took place when the ape developed language. Through language the animal became self-aware and thus human.
The author takes us through extraordinary and lengthy non-scientific, uncited and undocumented theories of how the brain works, presenting, as it were, simple logic to previously incomprehensible mysteries. The whole volume presents these "explanations" which one would have no reason to necessarily accept or reject, in order to set the stage for his critical thesis, that man is the ape that spoke.
But when he finally comes to that moment in his work, he is largely at a loss to present anything much more than the assertion of his theory. He can offer no real explanation for how it was to have really happened and virtually glosses over this most critical point, as if the reader, who has been lulled into acceptance by the rest of the work, will just accept it, that the reader, after swallowing so much bland porridge, will now swallow unquestioningly the poison pill.
But for some who have already made up their minds that evolution is the only (and obvious) explanation for our origins as the human species, McCrone's explanation is just about as good as any. And for the believer in God and God's creation, this is unfounded palaver and gibberish nonsense.
I found one intriguing aspect of the evolutionist's theories, and that was this: from the evolutionist's point of view, we obviously came from somewhere, say point A, and we have obviously evolved to where we are, say point P, and therefore, exactly how we traversed from point A to point P is just a matter of "filling in the blanks", and the most obvious and reasonable explanations are, as the best we can do at the time, acceptable as our "state of the art" in the matter.
This approach thus allows for acceptance in the mind of "the best we can do". I found this sort of logic hidden behind the theories the author presented and perhaps being the central driving force of his arguments. In any case, I felt utterly flabbergasted and almost betrayed when I came to his actual thesis, almost as if he had possibly conned himself into believing something and would now present it to the reader.
I am left with the unmistakable impressions of a theory totally unfounded, not only scientifically, but also logically. And yet this thesis is buried in a marsh of "well intentioned" reasoning and rationalizations meant to disguise the fact that he truly has nothing to present ultimately except his assertion.
The author's presentation basically says, "I have read, studied and absorbed the scientific evidence, and I will now explain to you, in simpler layman's terms, the way things are."
I would have much preferred another approach, "I have read the scientific evidence, and this is what it says," cited by author and study.
"It all started with an ape that spoke." "Man became self-aware and self-possessed." Since he himself explains how the process of speaking only took 2 million years, it was not so simple or sudden a process.
So in actuality, did speaking make the human self-aware, or is it the other way around? Self-awareness, in my feeling, can be thought of in one simple way, we are aware, and then we are aware that we are aware.
A dog thinks, has a brain, pursues things that he wants, needs of finds interesting. But he is not so aware that he is doing so: he just kind-of does it. But human awareness is distinguished by a constant interaction that goes on within our brains: I do, and I observe what I have done and evaluate it. It's this evaluation of self that we call human awareness. The awareness of self, including evaluation and judgements, how did I do? Did I do well, did I do poorly? Was what I did legal or illegal? Was it ethical or unethical? This evaluation of self catapulted our human species to, literally and figuratively, to astronomical heights.
But I do not feel that speaking made humans self-aware. That sounds too much like click-bait to read my book. It sounds dramatic, yet closer to reality might be, speaking and self-awareness evolved over a long period of time, and each tended to augment the other.
But a statement like this probably wouldn't sell as many books.
The Ape that Spoke by John McCrone. An attempt to explain his theory that the critical turning point in the evolution of human beings from the ape took place when the ape developed language. Through language the animal became self-aware and thus human.
The author takes us through extraordinary and lengthy non-scientific, uncited and undocumented theories of how the brain works, presenting, as it were, simple logic to previously incomprehensible mysteries. The whole volume presents these "explanations" which one would have no reason to necessarily accept or reject, in order to set the stage for his critical thesis, that man is the ape that spoke.
But when he finally comes to that moment in his work, he is largely at a loss to present anything much more than the assertion of his theory. He can offer no real explanation for how it was to have really happened and virtually glosses over this most critical point, as if the reader, who has been lulled into acceptance by the rest of the work, will just accept it, that the reader, after swallowing so much bland porridge, will now swallow unquestioningly the poison pill.
But for some who have already made up their minds that evolution is the only (and obvious) explanation for our origins as the human species, McCrone's explanation is just about as good as any. And for the believer in God and God's creation, this is unfounded palaver and gibberish nonsense.
I found one intriguing aspect of the evolutionist's theories, and that was this: from the evolutionist's point of view, we obviously came from somewhere, say point A, and we have obviously evolved to where we are, say point P, and therefore, exactly how we traversed from point A to point P is just a matter of "filling in the blanks", and the most obvious and reasonable explanations are, as the best we can do at the time, acceptable as our "state of the art" in the matter.
This approach thus allows for acceptance in the mind of "the best we can do". I found this sort of logic hidden behind the theories the author presented and perhaps being the central driving force of his arguments. In any case, I felt utterly flabbergasted and almost betrayed when I came to his actual thesis, almost as if he had possibly conned himself into believing something and would now present it to the reader.
I am left with the unmistakable impressions of a theory totally unfounded not only scientifically, but also logically. And yet this thesis is buried in a marsh of "well intentioned" reasoning and rationalizations meant to disguise the fact that he truly has nothing to present ultimately except his assertion.
The Ape that Spoke by John McCrone. An attempt to explain his theory that the critical turning point in the evolution of human beings from the ape took place when the ape developed language. Through language the animal became self-aware and thus human.
The author takes us through extraordinary and lengthy non-scientific, uncited and undocumented theories of how the brain works, presenting, as it were, simple logic to previously incomprehensible mysteries. The whole volume presents these "explanations" which one would have no reason to necessarily accept or reject, in order to set the stage for his critical thesis, that man is the ape that spoke.
But when he finally comes to that moment in his work, he is largely at a loss to present anything much more than the assertion of his theory. He can offer no real explanation for how it was to have really happened and virtually glosses over this most critical point, as if the reader, who has been lulled into acceptance by the rest of the work, will just accept it, that the reader, after swallowing so much bland porridge, will now swallow unquestioningly the poison pill.
But for some who have already made up their minds that evolution is the only (and obvious) explanation for our origins as the human species, McCrone's explanation is just about as good as any. And for the believer in God and God's creation, this is unfounded palaver and gibberish nonsense.
I found one intriguing aspect of the evolutionist's theories, and that was this: from the evolutionist's point of view, we obviously came from somewhere, say point A, and we have obviously evolved to where we are, say point P, and therefore, exactly how we traversed from point A to point P is just a matter of "filling in the blanks", and the most obvious and reasonable explanations are, as the best we can do at the time, acceptable as our "state of the art" in the matter.
This approach thus allows for acceptance in the mind of "the best we can do". I found this sort of logic hidden behind the theories the author presented and perhaps being the central driving force of his arguments. In any case, I felt utterly flabbergasted and almost betrayed when I came to his actual thesis, almost as if he had possibly conned himself into believing something and would now present it to the reader.
I am left with the unmistakable impressions of a theory totally unfounded, not only scientifically, but also logically. And yet this thesis is buried in a marsh of "well intentioned" reasoning and rationalizations meant to disguise the fact that he truly has nothing to present ultimately except his assertion.
March 21, 2023
A fascinating book, but I don't know who made the decision to dispense with footnotes/endnotes entirely, and instead have notes at the end that reference page numbers. (On the other hand, that probably helped the author seem more authoritative -- turn to the back, and you encounter a lot of "this is my own speculation" references.)
September 14, 2020
This was fascinating. An interesting theory well-articulated.
March 13, 2022
3.5 out of 5
November 27, 2012
This is a great primer on some of the basic factors that have given rise to human language ability and the brain's functions. This book is a bit old now so some of the references aren't always accurate anymore (some of the naming conventions have changed), but generally the core concepts are still valid. I don't agree with all of McCrone's insights, and some of the things he glosses over are very important and made to seem trivial. But, on the whole, this is a very enjoyable read that is accessible to anyone willing to read it.
June 5, 2013
It was an interesting book and very approachable to a lay person. However, much more of the book was about the way the brain works (using metaphors) than I expected or enjoyed. The second half was much more interesting, in which McCrone makes the connection between language and the development of the mind of homo sapiens and our predecessors, giving examples of how language itself may have evolved alongside the brain's development.
September 19, 2015
Fascinating subject, terrible execution.
I know this book is popular and I wanted to like it, but the abductive narrative approach (while ignoring contrary data even after mentioning them), the reification of the evolutionary process, and the constant assertion of putative processes as factual make this unreadable for me.
I know this book is popular and I wanted to like it, but the abductive narrative approach (while ignoring contrary data even after mentioning them), the reification of the evolutionary process, and the constant assertion of putative processes as factual make this unreadable for me.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews