 In pursuing this line of thought, Knight takes inspiration not only from modern Darwinian theorists such as Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith but also from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who in their later years were fascinated by what was then the new science of anthropology.In 1996, Knight co-founded the EVOLANG series of international conferences on the origins of language, since when he has become a prominent figure in debates on the origins of human symbolic culture and especially the origin of language.In recognition of his contribution to evolutionary linguistics, Knight was awarded the Evolutionary Linguistics Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award at an event held in Vienna in April 2014.