Abstract Africa was more than just the ‘‘cradle’’ of language, a place of nurture for language and for the anatomically modern humans who have had full capacity for language for more than 200,000 years. From an evolutionary viewpoint we would think of Africa also as something of a ‘‘womb’’ for language, nurturing the embryonic beginnings of language as it emerged in archaic species of Homo, and fostering the gradual co-evolution of language and the complex brain structures necessary for speech and fully modern language. Form and function usually evolve together. We would expect the beginnings of speech and language to undergo positive natural selection. Brain structures which improved speech and language would thereby be selected for. Control of the vocal apparatus is highly complex, involving tongue, lips, vocal cords, breathing, etc.; gaining the neural ability to exercise conscious control of all this was not likely the result of a single mutation. But many people speculate or argue that there was a revolution in language, one important genetic mutation for language, about 50,000 years ago, that brought about a revolution in culture and allowed modern humans to leave Africa for Europe and the rest of the world.