Составители: багдасарова н. А., Дубовская о. В., Караваева е. М., Кононович о. Н

In other words, we face a world in which intelligible communication is likely to become a rarity. A logical conclusion, perhaps, but it must be borne in mind that the death of language has been predicted many times in the past by such respected figures as George Bernard Shaw. Nevertheless, most parents would find it hard not to agree with Wells's basic message.

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It is a worrying trend, not just for those who lose an ability to use language, he says, but for the fate of the planet as a whole. Robbed of an ability to follow and sustain complex arguments, more and more humans will simply give up trying to understand or influence the world around them, including the key international challenges we face like global warming and cloning.

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Indeed, it is a particularly alarming prospect for a species that is distinguished by its communication skills. Language has been found in every one of the thousands of societies documented by scientists and is used by every neurologically normal member of humanity. As Steve Parker, director of the Centre of Cognitive Neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: 'Language is so tightly woven into human experiences that it is scarcely possible to imagine life without it.'

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The observation suggests that the root of human language is social, not intellectual, and that its usefulness in communicating complex notions came relatively late in our evolutionary history. For most of our time on Earth, language has had the equivalent role of grooming among monkeys, strengthening social bonds between individuals and cementing tribes together.

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Only relatively late in the story of Homo Sapiens has language emerged in its current mature version. Recent work by Simon Fisher at the Welcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford and Svante Paabo, at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has dated key mutations in genes involved in neurone activity to about 200,000 years ago. These, they say, may have been crucial to our acquisition of sophisticated speech.

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It is precisely at this time, of course, that modern Homo Sapiens evolved in an area of sub-Saharan Africa. Armed with a new linguistic sophistication, they poured out of Africa and by 40,000 years ago had reached the edge of Europe, then the stronghold of massive, cold-adapted Neanderthals, who nevertheless succumbed to these African interlopers, even though the continent was then in the grip of the last Ice Age. Above all, it was our ability to exchange complex data that gave us an advantage in those harsh days.

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In short, language has been a mixed blessing for humanity. But it is what defines us as a species and it is hard to imagine us losing our prowess in the long term. In any case, just because our kids grunt at us, it doesn't mean to say they cannot communicate,' says Dunbar. 'It probably just means they don't want to talk to adults.