Babel's Dawn: The Book

I have signed a contract with Counterpoint to write a book with the tentative title of Babel's Dawn: A Natural History of the Origins of Speech. Counterpoint also published my book on the discovery of the Ice Age, The Ice Finders, and had a great experience with the editor in chief, Jack Shoemaker. He only suggested about three changes to that first book, but each one made the book much better.

Naturally I am delighted. This project has made me a great believer in blogs and I can think of no better form for learning what is going on in a field of inquiry. It has forced me to read hundreds of articles that I never would have seen otherwise, and I get the benefit of comments from others. At the same time, there is nothing like a book for telling a story and weaving themes together. Heaven knows what I will end up with, but I start with the thought that I will be focusing on three themes:

• The story of the origins of speech from the last common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos to the first story.
• How evolution works: using the rise of a new trait to show in detail how evolution transforms species from one thing to something very different.
• What it means to be human: show the rise of a whole series of traits that support speech and distinguish homo sapiens from other animals.

I also want to thank my agent, John Thornton, who has worked tirelessly on this project.

I hope the book will appear in early 2011.

Comments

[Roberto]

Dear Babel.Congratulations; but please, dont talk too much about how evolution works? We all are kinda sick of it and exhausted... after the 200 year Darwin "celebration/onsalught". After all I did not see many festive spirits; except for some of course.

[David Fried]

Congratulations, and talk about whatever you want to! That's why speech evolved. . . Seriously, I'm looking forward to the book. Do you have any sort of anticipated completion/publication date? Then you can write a sequel: "Babble's Dawn: A Natural History of the Origins of Blog Comments."

[Michael]

Hey, congratulations, I'm looking forward to reading your book! I think over the past few years you really have become some kind of internet authority and go-to-guy when it comes to the topic of language evolution or some new article in that area.
So kudos and maybe this will actually lead to more language evolution scholars taking note of your ideas.