New Guide to Human Evolution: Survival of the Wittiest

Think of how many lives could
have been saved by realizing that
evolution succeeds with humor

 

Today’s episode of the Darwin Follies is brought to you by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. In one of its publications, Ljiljana Progovac, a Serbian linguist specializing on the evolution of language, tossed out Darwin’s legacy of nature red in tooth and claw, at least when it comes to humans. All that gory history of Social Darwinism and eugenics could have been avoided if her theory had been taught back in the late 1800s. The genocides and wars resulting in over 150 million deaths were so unnecessary. Humans could have gained fitness by being witty!

Survival of the wittiest (not friendliest): The art and science behind human linguistic and cognitive evolution (Ljiljana Progovac, PNAS Nexus, 31 March 2026).

The write-up on Phys.org about this new proposal by an “expert” agrees that it’s funny, but they think it is serious, too.

Is wittiness a kind of fitness? Ljiljana Progovac explores the idea that quick-wittedness—using and combining words in a clever and funny way—has been actively selected for in humans from the dawn of language. The findings are published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Progovac’s theory is not a rejection of Darwinism. It’s a reframing. It still has all the traditional Darwinian structure and terminology: fitness, emergence, selection, and reproductive success. The first reference in her paper is to Darwin’s Descent of Man. There’s also a reference to Darwin’s Origin of Species.

But in her notion, the fittest humans were adept at combining words in unexpected ways to attract females. Moreover, Progovac claims that wittiness is heritable:

Witness the new fitness of wittiness!

According to the author, skilled deployers of such compounds could have had higher reproductive fitness than less witty individuals, and their descendants could have created still more complicated grammatical rules with which to showcase their wit.

This new reframing of fitness still ranks humans on a fitness scale (“I’m wittier than you are!”), but could have resulted in more peaceful coexistence by using words instead of swords. One can even imagine the fittest in this new framework as being the least-fit on the old framework. Perhaps Fuegians and Hottentots could have outwitted white Europeans by becoming the best stand-up comedians.

Truth or Consequences

Progovac’s hypothesis garnered the approval of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences by being published in their journal without criticism. Our readers might wonder, however, if Ljiljana pondered the implications of “survival of the wittiest” for society and history. One obvious question could be asked: was she being witty enough herself to score on the logical fitness scale? Let’s imagine a Neanderthal named Grunt, and ask some logical questions:

• If wittiness is heritable, did a Neanderthal get hit by a mutation for wit?
• Did Dr Progovac identify a gene that was struck by a cosmic ray that gave Grunt a new trait on the hunt?
• Did Grunt suddenly blurt out the combination “mammoth-pie” to his wife Yunt that made her laugh at how clever he suddenly became?
• Did Yunt get the mutation, too?
• Was the mutated gene dominant or recessive?
• Did their son Blunt inherit the gene?
• If wit is a learned skill, was it inherited by intelligent design instead of natural selection?
• Are women generally attracted to how witty men are?

Artistic Selection

Lest we put words in her mouth, let’s read her Abstract and measure Progovac’s own wit to be sure she’s not afflicted with the self-defeating Yoda Complex. Notice that she builds on a previous demolition of Old Darwinism called the “survival of the friendliest” hypothesis (ponder that, eugenicists). She begins by explaining that her vacuous notion builds on previous vacuous notions:

There are several previous findings, both theoretical and experimental, that have paved the way toward the view of human evolution as the “survival of the wittiest,” subject to sexual selection, offering better explanatory power than the “survival of the friendliest.” While research on language evolution has largely neglected the artistic dimension, the fitness in humans is correlated with linguistic eloquence, including humor. This is one of those cases where science can only explain a phenomenon by considering its artistic dimension, and in which linguistic creativity and genetics come into direct contact.

Comedy is an art form, in other words. She continues:

My argument is that selection for quick-wittedness (using and combining words in a clever and funny way), specific to language and unique to humans, needs to be added to the complex picture of human evolution, relevant from the earliest stages of language/grammar. Wittiness is a trait that allows competition (by “outwitting” others) while at the same time favoring “friendliness” in that it provides an excellent platform for replacing physical aggression with verbal behavior and cognitive contest, the hallmarks of human nature.

Just picture the imaginary histories this hypothesis conjures up! A band of modern humans comes at the Neanderthals with clubs and axes. Grunt shouts, “mammoth-pie” at them and they all stop in their tracks, then burst out laughing. No need for warfare or genocide; they become friends, eat mammoth pie together, and intermarry. And that, children, is how we inherited Neanderthal genes.

Progovac explores how wit could have emerged as soon as the earliest grammar allowed for novel or unexpected word combinations. Verb-noun compounds, an ancient but now largely moribund construction of verb+noun, create expressive nouns in multiple languages, as in “killjoy” or “pickpocket.” Such compounds are often funny, frequently coarse, and many are short-lived. Neural imaging suggests that verb-noun compounds produce a more vivid and visceral* effect than the more common formations such as “joy killer” or “pocket picker.”
*As opposed to logical.

While gnawing their mammoth pies around the cave campfire, Grunt looks at William the modern human, and says “killjoy,” expecting another laugh. But William takes offense and calls Grunt a “pickpocket.” A fight breaks out, and warfare soon replaces wittiness as the driving force behind human evolution: competition to the death! And that, children, is why the Neanderthals went extinct.

Witty Science

This is all serious science, Progovac boasts. It even includes fossils.

This proposal is based on a precise linguistic reconstruction of the earliest stages of grammar, providing linguistic detail (“living fossils”) necessary for hypothesis testing, including neuroimaging experiments.

Wait; aren’t living fossils a rebuke to Darwinians?

Did Progovac perform any hypothesis testing or neuroimaging experiments? Yes; in Futureware Land, a side passage in Malice in Blunderland. How’s that for wit? Will it attract the ladies? Not if they are Darwinians. Evolutionists have no sense of humor. That’s why they’re so unfit. That’s why they become intolerant, wanting to eliminate the competition.

Progovac uses the word emergence 11 times, selection 54 times, and evolution 120 times, but logic zero times. Everything beautiful in human culture she believes simply emerged: language emerged. Grammar emerged. Wit emerged. Human uniqueness, including body and soul, simply emerged. How? By Darwinian magic.

For propagating a nonsense, vacuous, illogical notion to explain the most exceptional beings on earth, and for misusing scientific theories of genetic inheritance, and for bungling the dark history of Darwinism, Progovac has lost the competition for wit. Because her proposal is both witless and fitless, and not particularly clever, we award her a button labeled, “2026 April Fool.”