Includes bibliographical references (pages 350-419) and indexes.

1. Introduction : A social perspective on how language began / Daniel Dor, Chris Knight, and Jerome Lewis -- 2. Why we need to move from gene-culture co-evolution to culturally driven co-evolution / Daniel Dor and Eva Jablonka -- 3. Niche construction and semiosis : biocultural and social dynamics / Chris Sinha -- 4. Signal evolution and the social brain / Camilla Power -- 5. How can a social theory of language evolution be grounded in evidence? / Sverker Johansson -- 6. The 'poly-modalic' nature of utterances and its relevance for inquiring into language origins / Adam Kendon -- 7. BaYaka Pygmy multi-modal and mimetic communication traditions / Jerome Lewis -- 8. Language presupposes an enchronic infrastructure for social interaction / N.J. Enfield and Jack Sidnell -- 9. The instruction of imagination : language and its evolution as a communication technology / Daniel Dor -- 10. Chimpanzee grooming gestures and sounds : what might they tell us about how language evolved? / Simone Pika -- 11. Vocal communication and social awareness in chimpanzees and bonobos / Zanna Clay and Klaus Zuberbühler -- 12. Why humans and not apes : the social preconditions for the emergence of language / Charles Whitehead -- 13. Language and collective fiction : from children's pretence to social institutions / Emily Wyman -- 14. The time frame of the emergence of modern language and its implications / Dan Dediu and Stephen C. Levinson -- 15. The evolution of ritual as a process of sexual selection / Camilla Power -- 16. The red thread : pigment use and the evolution of collective ritual / Ian Watts -- 17. Language and symbolic culture : an outcome of hunter-gatherer reverse dominance / Chris Knight -- 18. The co-evolution of human intersubjectivity, morality, and language / Jordan Zlatev -- 19. Forever united : the co-evolution of language and normativity / Ehud Lamm -- 20. Why talk? / Jean-Louis Dessalles -- 21. Vocal deception, laughter, and the linguistic significance of reverse dominance / Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis -- 22. Memory, imagination, and the evolution of modern language / Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka -- 23. Transmission biases in the cultural evolution of language : towards an explanatory framework / N.J. Enfield -- 24. Breaking down false barriers to understanding / Luc Steels.