Language has emerged in no other species than humans, suggesting a profound obstacle to its evolution; maybe quite specific social conditions were prerequisite for the evolution of language- and symbol-ready hominins

The Role of Egalitarianism and Gender Ritual in the Evolution of Symbolic Cognition. Camilla Power. August 2019. Chp 19 in Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology, Routledge. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335062001

Abstract: Are there constraints on the social conditions that could have given rise to language and symbolic cognition? Language has emerged in no other species than humans, suggesting a profound obstacle to its evolution. If language is seen as an aspect of cognition, limitations can be expected in terms of computational capacity. But if it is seen it as fundamentally for communication, then the problems will be found in terms of social relationships. Below a certain threshold of cooperation and trust, no language or symbolic communication could evolve (Knight & Lewis, 2017a); this has been termed a “platform of trust” (Wacewicz, 2017).... In this chapter, I argue that quite specific social conditions were prerequisite for the evolution of language- and symbol-ready hominins. One of the requirements differentiating our ancestors from other African apes was a switch to mainly female philopatry – females living with their relatives, rather than dispersing at sexual maturity – coevolving with an increasing tendency to egalitarianism....How did increasing egalitarianism affect males and potentially “feminize” male behavior for cooperative offspring care? How were male and female relations affected in the evolution of genus Homo and Homo sapiens?