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have latent symbolic capacities that they rarely--if ever--use in the wild. Objecting to the sudden mutation idea, these authors argue that even if a chance mutation were to install a language organ in an evolving bipedal primate, it would be adaptively useless under all known primate social conditions. A very specific social structure - one capable of upholding unusually high levels of public accountability and trust - must have evolved before or concurrently with language to make reliance on "cheap signals" (e.g. words, where no actual resources

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