What Is Language?

Language is more than words; it is also how the words are put together—grammar. The ability to use fluent, nuanced language is local to humans: bees, parrots, and chimps can approximate it but not with the complexity or spontaneity that comes naturally to us. Despite influential speculations, it is unclear whether Neanderthals could speak in the same manner as Homo sapiens, and theories that language emerged as the result of a single gene mutation about 30,000 years ago are increasingly controversial as well.