TED | 语言如何改变人类

00:12

每一个人都拥有，一个最强大，危险并具有颠覆性的特性，这一特性是自然选择前所未有的设计，它是一个神经声频技术，用于与他人交流思想，我说的当然就是语言，因为通过语言你可以将自己的想法，直接灌输进别人脑子里，而他们亦可这样对你，双方都不用动手术，实际上，当你讲话的时候，使用的是一种遥测技术，这跟遥控器，遥控电视的差别并不大，差别仅是遥控器，借助红外光，而你依靠的是脉冲，声音的不连续脉冲。

00:56

就如同使用遥控器，去修改电视机内部设定，迎合自己口味一样，你使用语言，来转变别人大脑内部的设定，以满足你的需要，语言是用来表达的基因，得到它们想要的表述，试想从婴儿不可思议的视角来看，当婴儿发现仅仅通过发出声音，他/她就能使音频穿过房间，如魔法一样，甚至从他/她嘴里蹦出。

01:26

如今，语言的颠覆性能力，已经在那些舆论审查的年代，以及你无法读到的书籍，你不能使用的敏感词，和字眼中得到了印证，事实上，圣经里巴别塔的故事，就是关于语言能力的，一个寓言和警示，这个故事说，远古的人类变得自以为是，他们以为通过同一种语言一起合作，可以建起一座，带他们通往天堂的塔，上帝为此大逆不道的篡夺行为震怒，因此毁了这座通天塔，并为了确保，人类无法再建，他通过赋予人们不同的语言将之拆散--，用不同的语言使他们迷惑，所以这导致一个奇妙而讽刺的结果，正是语言阻碍我们的交流，甚至在今天，仍有些字词我们不能用，有些短语不能说，因为这样做，我们也许会锒铛入狱，甚至招来杀身之祸，这一切只因为，口吐一口气而已。

02:30

我们刚刚这番关于语言这一特性的长篇大论，无非是要说有些东西值得去解释，那就是语言这一奇妙特性，是如何演变的及其原因，并且为什么，只在人类中演变？为获得以上问题的答案，先要做点意料外的工作，我们必须先研究，黑猩猩使用工具的能力，这些黑猩猩正在利用工具，这被认为是它们智力的一个表现，但是如果它们真的聪明的话，为什么它们要用根棍子把白蚁从地面里取出，而不是用铲子挖呢？如果它们真的聪明，为什么自己要用石头砸开坚果呢？为什么它们不去商店买上一袋坚果，在那里已经有砸好的坚果为它们准备好了？为什么呢？因为那些是人类才能做的。

03:16

黑猩猩不那么做的原因，是它们缺乏心理学家和人类学家所谓的，社会学习能力，它们似乎缺乏，向别人学习的能力，通过照搬或模仿，或者仅仅观察，理所当然，它们无法改进他人的想法，或者从别人错误中吸取教训，汲取别人的智慧，所以它们只是单纯做同一件事，重复一遍又一遍，事实上，如果我们能跨越一百万年，然后再追溯回来，这些黑猩猩肯定还在做着同样的事，用同样的棍子抓着白蚁，用同样的石头砸着坚果。

03:55

也许这听上去有些傲慢，甚至狂妄自大，我们怎么知道这些的？因为我们的祖先--直立人就是这样，约二百万年前，这些直立猿人，在非洲的热带稀树草原进化，他们造出了精巧的手斧，能完全贴合手形，但如果我们查看化石，会发现他们造着同样的手斧，重复着，持续了一百万年，你可以通过各年代的化石看到，现在我们可以做几个关于猿人生存时间，和他们的世代的猜想，在约四万代的时间里，从父辈到子辈，以及周围人的观察中，手斧没有任何改进，我们甚至不太清楚，我们的近亲--尼安德特人是否，具备社会学习能力，当然他们的工具，比猿人要复杂得多，但在30万年时间里，他们也只表现出很少变化，那些尼安德特人，生活在欧亚大陆。

04:56

这与我们所知的，“有样学样”（猴子见什么学什么）的谚语，完全相反，令人惊讶的事实是，其他的所有动物，都无法做到有样学样，至少做到很少，甚至这张图片，虽然它有人为操纵之嫌--，“不会是来自巴纳姆贝利马戏团吧”。

05:18

但是相比之下，我们有学习能力，我们可以通过观察别人，以及照搬或模仿，别人所做的来学习，然后我们可以在一系列选择中挑选，最好的选择，我们可以汲取别人的想法，可以发展他人的智慧，所以我们的智慧可以累积，技术得以进步，这种人类学家所称，累积性的文化适应，这种想法的积累，是你周围所有一切的根源，并存在于你繁忙和与人合作的日常生活中，这个世界，跟一千或者两千年前相比，已经发生了翻天覆地的变化，这一切都归因于累积性文化适应，你们坐着的椅子，礼堂里的灯，我的手机，你们携带的iPad和iPod，这些都是，累积性文化适应的结果。

06:17

对许多评论者来说，累积性文化适应，或者说社会学习，已经大功告成，人类这一物种可以创造事物，所以我们比任何其他物种都要繁荣先进，事实上我们甚至可以创造“生命本身的东西”--，如我所说，我们周围的一切，实际上，大约二十万年前，当我们的祖先开始直立行走，并获得社会学习的能力，这的确是故事的开始，但不是结尾，因为社会学习能力的获得，会令社会和进化陷入一个进退两难的地步，其解决方法，不但决定了未来人类心理的轨迹，也决定了整个世界的未来走向，最重要的是，它告诉我们为什么我们有语言。

07:12

两难局面的出现是因为，社会学习实际是一种观察性窃取，如果我可以通过观察你而学习，我就可以窃取你最好的想法，从你的努力中坐收渔利，而不用像你一样投入时间和精力，去开发想法，如果我可以观察你用什么饵钓鱼，如何削薄手斧，改进它，或者偷偷跟踪你去你的蘑菇地，我就可以从你的知识，智慧和技能中获益，甚至在你之前，就抓走鱼，社会学习确实是种观察性窃取，任何具备该能力的物种，必然都会，隐藏自己最好的点子，以防别人偷走。

07:59

大约二十万年前，人类遇到了这一困境，我们只有两种选择，来解决，观察性窃取导致的冲突，一个选择是，我们可以退回到，小的家庭单位，如此一来我们的想法和知识，仅仅在亲属间交流，假如我们在大约二十万年前的时候，选择了这个方法，那也许4万年前我们进入欧洲的时候，还过着尼安德特人一样的生活，这是因为小团体，只能产生很少的想法和发明，却更有发生事故和厄运的倾向，所以如果我们选择了那条路，我们的进化之路就会通向森林，并且是短命之路。

08:50

另一个选择，就是发展交流的系统，从而分享想法，和相互合作，选择这条路意味着，积累起来的海量知识和智慧，向每一个个体开放，而不仅仅是单个家庭的，或者个人的积累，我们选了第二条路，语言就是产物。

09:21

语言的进化解决了，观察性窃取的危机，语言是社会技术，用于加强合作的益处，达成共识，买卖交易，以及协调活动，你可以看到，处于发展中形态的社会，刚刚开始习得语言，还没有完全掌握，就像一个没有翅膀的鸟儿，就像翅膀之于鸟儿，扇动空气去探索天空，语言之于人类，开启合作来探索未来，我们以为这是理所当然，因为我们是纯熟掌握语言的物种。

10:00

但是你应当意识到，甚至我们最简单的交换行为，也完全依赖于语言，为了弄清为什么，请假想进化早期的两个场景，假设，你擅长制造箭头，但是完全不会，制造嵌着飞羽的箭杆，你知道另外两人擅长制箭杆，但他们不会造箭头，那么，那两人中一个还没真正学会使用语言，另外一个熟练语言技巧。

10:35

有一天你带了一堆箭头，去找那个不太会说话的人，你把箭头放在他面前，希望他明白你想用箭头，交换做好的箭，但他看着一堆箭头，以为是礼物，就捡起来冲你一笑就走了，你追上他连比带划地解释，结果打起来了，被他用你自己的箭头捅伤了，好的，现在再重复这个场景，你去找有语言的那个人，你放下箭头说，“我想用这些跟你交换做好的箭，我们对半分”，那人说：“没问题。”，“就这么办。”，交易做成了。

11:15

一旦我们有了语言，我们可以分享想法并合作，从而创造繁荣，没有语言这是无法完成的，这就是为什么人类，在全世界繁衍发展，而其他的动物，只能干坐在动物园的笼子里，怨断愁肠，这就是为什么我们建起航天飞机和大教堂，而它们用棍子捅地，抓白蚁，如果这个角度看语言，及其价值，对解决观察性窃取是无可争议的，任何物种获得了它，都应该有创造和繁荣昌盛的表现，考古学记录证实了这一点。

11:56

如果研究我们的祖先——尼安德特人和猿人，我们的直系祖先，他们活动于世界的小范围区域，而人类在，大约二十万年前，迅速地走出了非洲，分布到了全世界，占据了地球几乎每一处栖息地，现在当其他物种还受限于，他们基因适应的地方，拥有社会学习能力和语言的我们，已经可以改造环境，满足我们的需求了，所以我们的文明，比其他任何动物都要繁荣，语言确实是，我们进化出的最有利的特性，这是我们拥有的最有价值的特性，以此我们将新土地和资源，转化成更多的人和他们的基因，这比自然选择做的还要多。

12:50

语言的确是，我们基因的声音，尽管我们有发达的语言，但我们也做了件特殊，甚至可以说是件奇怪的事，当我们分散到全世界，我们发展出成千上万种语言，目前，全球大约有，七千到八千种在使用的语言，也许你觉得这是很自然的事，当我们越分散，语言也越高度分化，但真正令人困惑并且讽刺的是，世界上最密集的语言分布区域，恰恰是人口最密集聚居的地方。

13:24

在巴布新几内亚，那里有八百到一千种，独特的人类语言，不同的人类语言，仅仅在那一座岛上，岛上一些地方，你每走上两三英里，就能碰上一种新语言，更神奇的是，有次我碰上一个巴布人，问他这是不是真的，他说：“不，不是。”，“比这要近多了。”，这是真的，岛上有些地方，一英里之内就能发现另一语言的使用，同样在一些遥远的大洋小岛上也是这样。

14:00

这样看来我们利用语言，不仅仅是为了合作，也是在集团周围划分界限，确立身份，也许是保护我们的知识，智慧和技能，以防落入外人之手，我们也深知如此，因为当我们研究不同的语言群落，他们有着各自的文化，会发现不同的语言，减缓了群落间想法的交流，也阻碍了技术交流，甚至是基因交流，虽然我不能完全代表你们，但可以这样说，我们不会跟无法交流的人去做爱，（笑声），不过也许现在得算上这种情况，基于已有证据表明，我们曾与尼安德特人和丹尼索夫人有些不甚美好的浪漫史（早期现代人类与尼安德特人及丹尼索夫人杂交的科学发现）。

14:53

我们发现的趋势，这种看似自然的趋势，即这种趋向分离，趋向自我孤立的势头，一头撞上了现代社会，就被击破，这幅令人影响深刻的图片，并不是世界地图，而是Facebook脸谱朋友群分布的一副地图，当你把朋友的位置，依照他们所在的经纬度连起来，就画出了一副世界地图，现代社会在不停地，与自身和其他人交流，这种交流，比历史上任何时候都频繁，这种交流，这种世界性的连接，也就是全球化下，正在渐渐浮起的隐忧，因为这些不同的语言，变成一道屏障，阻碍了货物和思想的交流，技术和智慧的交流，在合作上施加了障碍。

15:45

比起其他地方，这在欧盟尤为显著，欧盟有27个盟国，23种官方语言，欧盟，现在每年要花费超过十亿欧元，用于互翻23种官方语言，这大约是，十四亿五千万美元的，翻译开销，现在试想下这种奇怪的状况：如果27个，来自各个盟国的人，围坐在桌边，说着23种语言，简单计算就可以知道，你需要一个253人的翻译队伍，来保证配对说话的可能性，欧盟雇了，大约2500名永久编制的翻译，仅2007年一年--，当然应该有最新的数据可查，仅是翻译成英文的文件，就大约为一百三十万页。

16:46

如果语言真是，观察性窃取的解决方法，如果语言真是，我们合作的媒介，是人类发明的，用于促进思想无障碍流通和交换的技术，那么在现代社会，我们碰上了难题，这就是，在这个全球化的现代社会，我们是否承担得起使用如此多语言的代价。

17:14

可以这样说，自然的法则是，具有同等功能的特性是难以共存的，其中的一个往往战胜其他的而存活下去，我们在向着标准化的大步前进中，可以清楚地看到这一点，在许多测量物体的方法中，包括称重和量长，公制计量制度赢了，在许多计量时间的方法中，古怪的60进制制度，也就是时分秒计量单位，几乎被全世界采用，有很多很多方法，压印CD和DVD，但它们也同样标准化了，也许你可以想到更多，生活中的例子。

17:59

那么现代社会，面临着一个困境，这个困境，也是这个中国人面临的，他的口头语言，比起世界上任何其他的单一语言，都有更多的使用者，但是他坐在黑板前，把中文词组，翻译成英文词组，这个行为给我们提出了一种可能性，在这世界上，我们想要促进，合作和交流的可能性，在一个史无前例地，依赖于合作的世界上，为了去维持和促进我们的繁荣程度，他的行为告诉我们，也许，我们不得不承认，我们的命运会是：一个世界一种语言。

18:48

谢谢。

18:58

马特·瑞德里：马克，我有个问题。斯万特发现FOXP2基因，好像它与语言有关，而尼安德特人，也像我们一样有此基因，那么我们有没有什么办法，能够打败尼安德特人，如果他们也有语言的话？

19:15

马克·佩格尔：这是个很好的问题。很多人将会了解这个语言基因叫FOXP2，它应该是，在一个与语言有关的精巧的运动神经控制中，我不相信这个发现足以说明，尼安德特人拥有语言的原因是，打个比方：法拉利是有引擎的汽车，我的车也有引擎，但它不是法拉利，简单来说就是，基因本身，并不决定了，如语言这样复杂的结果，我们对FOXP2基因和尼安德特人的了解是，也许他们口腔里具备这样一个精巧的运动神经控制--不过谁知道呢，但这并不表明他们一定拥有语言。

19:56

马特·瑞德里：非常感谢。

00:12

Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It's a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people's minds. I'm talking about your language, of course, because it allows you to implant a thought from your mind directly into someone else's mind, and they can attempt to do the same to you, without either of you having to perform surgery. Instead, when you speak, you're actually using a form of telemetry not so different from the remote control device for your television. It's just that, whereas that device relies on pulses of infrared light, your language relies on pulses, discrete pulses, of sound. 

00:56

And just as you use the remote control device to alter the internal settings of your television to suit your mood, you use your language to alter the settings inside someone else's brain to suit your interests. Languages are genes talking, getting things that they want. And just imagine the sense of wonder in a baby when it first discovers that, merely by uttering a sound, it can get objects to move across a room as if by magic, and maybe even into its mouth. 

01:26

Now language's subversive power has been recognized throughout the ages in censorship, in books you can't read, phrases you can't use and words you can't say. In fact, the Tower of Babel story in the Bible is a fable and warning about the power of language. According to that story, early humans developed the conceit that, by using their language to work together, they could build a tower that would take them all the way to heaven. Now God, angered at this attempt to usurp his power, destroyed the tower, and then to ensure that it would never be rebuilt, he scattered the people by giving them different languages -- confused them by giving them different languages. And this leads to the wonderful irony that our languages exist to prevent us from communicating. Even today, we know that there are words we cannot use, phrases we cannot say, because if we do so, we might be accosted, jailed, or even killed. And all of this from a puff of air emanating from our mouths. 

02:30

Now all this fuss about a single one of our traits tells us there's something worth explaining. And that is how and why did this remarkable trait evolve, and why did it evolve only in our species? Now it's a little bit of a surprise that to get an answer to that question, we have to go to tool use in the chimpanzees. Now these chimpanzees are using tools, and we take that as a sign of their intelligence. But if they really were intelligent, why would they use a stick to extract termites from the ground rather than a shovel? And if they really were intelligent, why would they crack open nuts with a rock? Why wouldn't they just go to a shop and buy a bag of nuts that somebody else had already cracked open for them? Why not? I mean, that's what we do. 

03:16

Now the reason the chimpanzees don't do that is that they lack what psychologists and anthropologists call social learning. They seem to lack the ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching. As a result, they can't improve on others' ideas or learn from others' mistakes -- benefit from others' wisdom. And so they just do the same thing over and over and over again. In fact, we could go away for a million years and come back and these chimpanzees would be doing the same thing with the same sticks for the termites and the same rocks to crack open the nuts. 

03:55

Now this may sound arrogant, or even full of hubris. How do we know this? Because this is exactly what our ancestors, the Homo erectus, did. These upright apes evolved on the African savanna about two million years ago, and they made these splendid hand axes that fit wonderfully into your hands. But if we look at the fossil record, we see that they made the same hand axe over and over and over again for one million years. You can follow it through the fossil record. Now if we make some guesses about how long Homo erectus lived, what their generation time was, that's about 40,000 generations of parents to offspring, and other individuals watching, in which that hand axe didn't change. It's not even clear that our very close genetic relatives, the Neanderthals, had social learning. Sure enough, their tools were more complicated than those of Homo erectus, but they too showed very little change over the 300,000 years or so that those species, the Neanderthals, lived in Eurasia. 

04:56

Okay, so what this tells us is that, contrary to the old adage, "monkey see, monkey do," the surprise really is that all of the other animals really cannot do that -- at least not very much. And even this picture has the suspicious taint of being rigged about it -- something from a Barnum & Bailey circus. 

05:18

But by comparison, we can learn. We can learn by watching other people and copying or imitating what they can do. We can then choose, from among a range of options, the best one. We can benefit from others' ideas. We can build on their wisdom. And as a result, our ideas do accumulate, and our technology progresses. And this cumulative cultural adaptation, as anthropologists call this accumulation of ideas, is responsible for everything around you in your bustling and teeming everyday lives. I mean the world has changed out of all proportion to what we would recognize even 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. And all of this because of cumulative cultural adaptation. The chairs you're sitting in, the lights in this auditorium, my microphone, the iPads and iPods that you carry around with you -- all are a result of cumulative cultural adaptation. 

06:17

Now to many commentators, cumulative cultural adaptation, or social learning, is job done, end of story. Our species can make stuff, therefore we prospered in a way that no other species has. In fact, we can even make the "stuff of life" -- as I just said, all the stuff around us. But in fact, it turns out that some time around 200,000 years ago, when our species first arose and acquired social learning, that this was really the beginning of our story, not the end of our story. Because our acquisition of social learning would create a social and evolutionary dilemma, the resolution of which, it's fair to say, would determine not only the future course of our psychology, but the future course of the entire world. And most importantly for this, it'll tell us why we have language. 

07:12

And the reason that dilemma arose is, it turns out, that social learning is visual theft. If I can learn by watching you, I can steal your best ideas, and I can benefit from your efforts, without having to put in the time and energy that you did into developing them. If I can watch which lure you use to catch a fish, or I can watch how you flake your hand axe to make it better, or if I follow you secretly to your mushroom patch, I can benefit from your knowledge and wisdom and skills, and maybe even catch that fish before you do. Social learning really is visual theft. And in any species that acquired it, it would behoove you to hide your best ideas, lest somebody steal them from you. 

07:59

And so some time around 200,000 years ago, our species confronted this crisis. And we really had only two options for dealing with the conflicts that visual theft would bring. One of those options was that we could have retreated into small family groups. Because then the benefits of our ideas and knowledge would flow just to our relatives. Had we chosen this option, sometime around 200,000 years ago, we would probably still be living like the Neanderthals were when we first entered Europe 40,000 years ago. And this is because in small groups there are fewer ideas, there are fewer innovations. And small groups are more prone to accidents and bad luck. So if we'd chosen that path, our evolutionary path would have led into the forest -- and been a short one indeed. 

08:50

The other option we could choose was to develop the systems of communication that would allow us to share ideas and to cooperate amongst others. Choosing this option would mean that a vastly greater fund of accumulated knowledge and wisdom would become available to any one individual than would ever arise from within an individual family or an individual person on their own. Well, we chose the second option, and language is the result. 

09:21

Language evolved to solve the crisis of visual theft. Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation -- for reaching agreements, for striking deals and for coordinating our activities. And you can see that, in a developing society that was beginning to acquire language, not having language would be a like a bird without wings. Just as wings open up this sphere of air for birds to exploit, language opened up the sphere of cooperation for humans to exploit. And we take this utterly for granted, because we're a species that is so at home with language, 

10:00

but you have to realize that even the simplest acts of exchange that we engage in are utterly dependent upon language. And to see why, consider two scenarios from early in our evolution. Let's imagine that you are really good at making arrowheads, but you're hopeless at making the wooden shafts with the flight feathers attached. Two other people you know are very good at making the wooden shafts, but they're hopeless at making the arrowheads. So what you do is -- one of those people has not really acquired language yet. And let's pretend the other one is good at language skills. 

10:35

So what you do one day is you take a pile of arrowheads, and you walk up to the one that can't speak very well, and you put the arrowheads down in front of him, hoping that he'll get the idea that you want to trade your arrowheads for finished arrows. But he looks at the pile of arrowheads, thinks they're a gift, picks them up, smiles and walks off. Now you pursue this guy, gesticulating. A scuffle ensues and you get stabbed with one of your own arrowheads. Okay, now replay this scene now, and you're approaching the one who has language. You put down your arrowheads and say, "I'd like to trade these arrowheads for finished arrows. I'll split you 50/50." The other one says, "Fine. Looks good to me. We'll do that." Now the job is done. 

11:15

Once we have language, we can put our ideas together and cooperate to have a prosperity that we couldn't have before we acquired it. And this is why our species has prospered around the world while the rest of the animals sit behind bars in zoos, languishing. That's why we build space shuttles and cathedrals while the rest of the world sticks sticks into the ground to extract termites. All right, if this view of language and its value in solving the crisis of visual theft is true, any species that acquires it should show an explosion of creativity and prosperity. And this is exactly what the archeological record shows. 

11:56

If you look at our ancestors, the Neanderthals and the Homo erectus, our immediate ancestors, they're confined to small regions of the world. But when our species arose about 200,000 years ago, sometime after that we quickly walked out of Africa and spread around the entire world, occupying nearly every habitat on Earth. Now whereas other species are confined to places that their genes adapt them to, with social learning and language, we could transform the environment to suit our needs. And so we prospered in a way that no other animal has. Language really is the most potent trait that has ever evolved. It is the most valuable trait we have for converting new lands and resources into more people and their genes that natural selection has ever devised. 

12:50

Language really is the voice of our genes. Now having evolved language, though, we did something peculiar, even bizarre. As we spread out around the world, we developed thousands of different languages. Currently, there are about seven or 8,000 different languages spoken on Earth. Now you might say, well, this is just natural. As we diverge, our languages are naturally going to diverge. But the real puzzle and irony is that the greatest density of different languages on Earth is found where people are most tightly packed together. 

13:24

If we go to the island of Papua New Guinea, we can find about 800 to 1,000 distinct human languages, different human languages, spoken on that island alone. There are places on that island where you can encounter a new language every two or three miles. Now, incredible as this sounds, I once met a Papuan man, and I asked him if this could possibly be true. And he said to me, "Oh no. They're far closer together than that." And it's true; there are places on that island where you can encounter a new language in under a mile. And this is also true of some remote oceanic islands. 

14:00

And so it seems that we use our language, not just to cooperate, but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities, and perhaps to protect our knowledge and wisdom and skills from eavesdropping from outside. And we know this because when we study different language groups and associate them with their cultures, we see that different languages slow the flow of ideas between groups. They slow the flow of technologies. And they even slow the flow of genes. Now I can't speak for you, but it seems to be the case that we don't have sex with people we can't talk to. (Laughter) Now we have to counter that, though, against the evidence we've heard that we might have had some rather distasteful genetic dalliances with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. 

14:53

Okay, this tendency we have, this seemingly natural tendency we have, towards isolation, towards keeping to ourselves, crashes head first into our modern world. This remarkable image is not a map of the world. In fact, it's a map of Facebook friendship links. And when you plot those friendship links by their latitude and longitude, it literally draws a map of the world. Our modern world is communicating with itself and with each other more than it has at any time in its past. And that communication, that connectivity around the world, that globalization now raises a burden. Because these different languages impose a barrier, as we've just seen, to the transfer of goods and ideas and technologies and wisdom. And they impose a barrier to cooperation. 

15:45

And nowhere do we see that more clearly than in the European Union, whose 27 member countries speak 23 official languages. The European Union is now spending over one billion euros annually translating among their 23 official languages. That's something on the order of 1.45 billion U.S. dollars on translation costs alone. Now think of the absurdity of this situation. If 27 individuals from those 27 member states sat around table, speaking their 23 languages, some very simple mathematics will tell you that you need an army of 253 translators to anticipate all the pairwise possibilities. The European Union employs a permanent staff of about 2,500 translators. And in 2007 alone -- and I'm sure there are more recent figures -- something on the order of 1.3 million pages were translated into English alone. 

16:46

And so if language really is the solution to the crisis of visual theft, if language really is the conduit of our cooperation, the technology that our species derived to promote the free flow and exchange of ideas, in our modern world, we confront a question. And that question is whether in this modern, globalized world we can really afford to have all these different languages.

17:14

To put it this way, nature knows no other circumstance in which functionally equivalent traits coexist. One of them always drives the other extinct. And we see this in the inexorable march towards standardization. There are lots and lots of ways of measuring things -- weighing them and measuring their length -- but the metric system is winning. There are lots and lots of ways of measuring time, but a really bizarre base 60 system known as hours and minutes and seconds is nearly universal around the world. There are many, many ways of imprinting CDs or DVDs, but those are all being standardized as well. And you can probably think of many, many more in your own everyday lives. 

17:59

And so our modern world now is confronting us with a dilemma. And it's the dilemma that this Chinese man faces, who's language is spoken by more people in the world than any other single language, and yet he is sitting at his blackboard, converting Chinese phrases into English language phrases. And what this does is it raises the possibility to us that in a world in which we want to promote cooperation and exchange, and in a world that might be dependent more than ever before on cooperation to maintain and enhance our levels of prosperity, his actions suggest to us it might be inevitable that we have to confront the idea that our destiny is to be one world with one language. 

18:48

Thank you. 

18:58

Matt Ridley: Mark, one question. Svante found that the FOXP2 gene, which seems to be associated with language, was also shared in the same form in Neanderthals as us. Do we have any idea how we could have defeated Neanderthals if they also had language? 

19:15

Mark Pagel: This is a very good question. So many of you will be familiar with the idea that there's this gene called FOXP2 that seems to be implicated in some ways in the fine motor control that's associated with language. The reason why I don't believe that tells us that the Neanderthals had language is -- here's a simple analogy: Ferraris are cars that have engines. My car has an engine, but it's not a Ferrari. Now the simple answer then is that genes alone don't, all by themselves, determine the outcome of very complicated things like language. What we know about this FOXP2 and Neanderthals is that they may have had fine motor control of their mouths -- who knows. But that doesn't tell us they necessarily had language. 

19:56

MR: Thank you very much indeed.