Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language According to the social-brain theory, it was this need to understand social dynamics–not the need to find food or navigate terrain–that spurred and rewarded the evolution of bigger and bigger primate brains.




And the only way humans could handle groups of more than 50, Dunbar suggests, was to learn how to talk. “The conventional view,” Dunbar notes in his book, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, “is that language evolved to enable males to do things like coordinate hunts more effectively. . . . I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.

–Social Brain Theory
New York Times Magazine


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