ANSWERS
1- Language started between seven million years ago and 150,000 years ago. We are not
sure of the specific time when language started, but we can assume it was before
anatomically modern humans emerged.
2- Humans’ utterances evolved into communication when the information exchange was
beneficial for both the speaker and the listener.
3- The evolution of cooperation was essential for language to evolve, because language
started from the need of men to exchange information that was beneficial to the group, not to
the individual.
4- Researchers studied the behaviour of robots over generation by mutating and mixing their
softwares.
5- The study is described in the journal Current Biology, by a group including Dario Floreano
and Laurent Keller.
6- The researchers used “food” and “poison” in order to analyze the robots’ behaviour.
7- Poison was used as a tool to drive the robots to communicate with each other, so they
would exchange information about the location of poison.
8- Food turned out to be a downside because robots wouldn’t communicate and work as a
group, but would compete for the resource as individuals.
9- The researchers made the simulation more realistic by creating different tribes of robots,
basing on similar softwares.
10- The experiments proved that communication evolves very quickly when the individuals
are genetically similar, or when the situation requires them to work as a group.
SUMMARY
Language started sometime between seven million years ago and 150,000 years ago. Early
humans had a few utterances associated with a few objects. This happened when the
exchange of information was beneficial for both the listener and the speaker. That’s why
cooperation has been crucial for the evolution of language.
Robots have helped to study the origins of language. In particular, an important study was
conducted by Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller and published in the journal Current
Biology. The researchers studied the changing behaviour of 100 colonies of 10 virtual robots
over 500 generations. They mixed and mutated their software, and used “food” and “poison”
as tools to study the behaviour of robots. The results were that in the case of poison the
robots would work as a group and communicate with each other, and in the case of food
they would not collaborate but compete as rivals.
