How was the first language formed?

Nine-year-old Eva was watching an episode of the children’s show Horrible Histories about the stone age recently when a question popped into her head. The cave men were speaking a broken form of English, but Eva thought that didn’t sound right and she wondered: how was the first language formed? She joined our host Eloise to get some answers from anthropologist April Nowell from the University of Victoria in Canada. A podcast from The Conversation, the independent not-for-profit news organisation that brings you news and analysis straight from academic experts. Full credits available here. This season is supported by the University of Southampton in the UK, a world-leading research-intensive university with a global network of international students and campuses in Malaysia and Delhi. Are you a curious kid with a question? Pop it in an email, or record it and send us the audio to [email protected]. Curious Kids: who was the first person to speak English? Curious Kids: how did humans think about things, before they had language to think with? Curious Kids: are some languages more difficult than others?