Campfires Drove Evolutionary Storytelling
It’s time to turn the tables
on the Darwin Yodas and
let them refute themselves
Who needs to spend intellectual sweat trying to disprove Darwinism when evolutionists are turning out their own lights? Just point out to onlookers that they admit they are engaged in storytelling, not presenting truth.
Firelight and the origins of spoken language (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2 Sept 2026). Here is the opening of the Abstract of this new thesis by Catherine Hobaiter and Nathaniel Dominy. This is not in a junk journal. It is published by the venerable Royal Society, whose editors must be held accountable for what they print.
Language and fire are hallmarks of the human condition, but most scholars treat them as independent traits. We develop a theory for the origin of language that links both touchstones of human evolution. First, we show that precursors to language were probably rooted in the gestural systems of living apes. Next, we show that attempts to explain the evolution of spoken language in utilitarian terms (a) are undermined by evidence of these abilities in other species and (b) overestimate the need for language to sustain daily practicalities of early small-scale social groups. Instead, we draw attention to the fireside niche as the likely site for the origin of language during oral storytelling.
Illustrating once again the mindless rubber-duck imitation behavior of the mainstream media, here are a couple of echoes found in the news:
Storytelling Around Ancient Campfires May Have Shaped Human Language (Anastasia Scott, Discover Magazine, 2 Sept 2026). The subtitle promises readers will learn something, maybe. “Learn how firelight may have extended social life after dark, creating the conditions for storytelling to shape the evolution of human language.”
Firelight may have sparked human storytelling by extending social hours (University of St. Andrews via Phys.org, 2 Sept 2026). Reporters Gaby Clark and Robert Egan seem to pride themselves in quacking like all the other rubber ducks. They couldn’t critique the Hobaiter-Dominy thesis if they wanted to. They see their job as regurgitating the Darwin just-so story du jour unadulterated, smell and all.
New research from the University of St Andrews has developed a novel hypothesis of how firelight was critical to the evolution of sophisticated storytelling.
like evolution?
Lead author Catherine Hobaiter, professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, said, “Decades of research with other species has shown us that you don’t need language to learn from each other, to organize where and when to forage, to learn cultural knowledge about tools and songs, to coordinate hunting, or navigate social politics. It starts to look like human language didn’t evolve for anything very useful!”
Hobaiter added, “While other species share all these skills, there is a fundamental puzzle: We struggle to find evidence of key differences between human and ape communication, and yet we are surrounded by evidence of human distinctiveness. For all their incredible, rich communication and cultures, no other ape is inventing algebra, writing King Lear or heading out into interstellar space.”
The proverbial First Law of Holes is, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” None of these “researchers” and “science reporters” learned that rule in Evolution 101.
What they did learn was the Art of Just-So Storytelling. As Richard Lewontin described it, “the patent absurdity of some of its constructs … its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life” and “tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories” – all geared to prevent a Divine Foot in the door. Today’s Darwin tale is a great example of that. But it’s even worse.
Applying the Thesis to Darwinism
It means that the Story of Evolution itself is an example of “sophisticated storytelling” prompted initially by firelight around an unobserved campfire started by unobserved “human apes.” How could it be anything else? Where did “truth” sneak in? If everything about human distinctiveness evolved, then truth evolved, too. [Cue sound of implosion.]
If living apes cannot invent algebra, write King Lear or head out into interstellar space, and the only thing distinguishing “human apes” from the rest of the ape-like ancestors was campfire light that somehow prompted gestures to become verbal language, then the Darwinists supporting this story are forced to believe that campfire light caused the Story of Evolution. And that’s all it is – a story. Darwinist Yodas cannot climb out of humanity onto an exalted plane of objective truth and proclaim a credible account of how this all happened. Oh, but Hobaiter and Dominy try:
Darwin [1 reference to The Descent of Man] described fire as ‘the greatest [discovery], excepting language, ever made by man’. It is an oft-cited claim by those writing about the sequential origins of these traits. The past decade, however, has witnessed the integration of both topics into a unified vision of fire-mediated language evolution [2–4], a trend that parallels emerging evidence for temporal congruence in fire-use and the expansion of key brain features, such as Broca’s area, between 2.0 and 1.5 Ma [5,6 Note: correlation is not causation]. This development is notable for transcending the boundaries of several disciplines—evolutionary anthropology, comparative psychology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology—a factor that can impede progress. Another problem is mechanistic: how does fire promote language evolution? Here we put disparate literatures into conversation to highlight the testable properties of firelight and its potential influence on the origins of spoken language.
You can laugh now. It’s all part of the just-so story. A good story doesn’t need to be true. It only needs to be entertaining. And this one is highly entertaining.
Fake Science
The authors use the word “evidence” 14 times. But they cannot look at human infants gesturing before learning to talk, and call that evidence for their “hypothesis” (emphasis on hypo, “under” a thesis) that infants are recapitulating the apish origin of human language. They cannot look at modern hunter-gatherers telling stories around modern campfires and use that as evidence, either. Both those cases involve modern humans who already possess the full capacity for syntactic, semantic language. What about the properties of firelight? Does its heat, color, and rhythmic flickering give evidence that it contains generative powers of meaningful prose and poetry? Good grief; if that were the case, then any animal watching a wildfire would be shouting to call the Fire Department. Chimpanzees wouldn’t want a fire to wipe out their books and math homework now, would they? Not if fire has the power to “spark” language.
Nor can they use living ape gestures as evidence for the emergence of human language (or fish signaling, for that matter). This they know, as they call to mind Euler, Shakespeare, and von Braun, with no comparable ability recognizable in the animal world.
Once again, we find ourselves at an impasse. Our search for a ‘smoking gun’ to differentiate the communicative abilities of humans and great apes continues to elude us, and yet we remain surrounded by evidence of human distinctiveness. For all their communicative and technological capacity, no other ape is inventing algebra, writing King Lear or probing interstellar space.
At Their Wit’s End
This is what drove them off the cliff to look for something – anything – that might keep human exceptionalism embedded within the Story of Evolution.1 Did they succeed? Their story ends like a Shakespearean tragedy.2 After a desperate attempt to elevate their hypothesis as “More than Just-So Stories” (section 7 in the paper), they collapse in grief and broken hearts.
Our review risks over-romanticizing firelight, and evolutionary scenarios have a justifiably poor reputation. But if testable predictions are constructed carefully and regarded sceptically, they can inspire debate and generate new evidence-based lines of enquiry into the origins of human language, a story we never tire of telling.
Now you get it. The whole paper, pretending to be science, is just part of the story. They pretended to die of a broken heart, and after the curtain calls, they went out to dinner, singing, “The Darwin in the tale / the Darwin in the tale / Hi-ho, scenario, the Darwin in the tale.”
Meanwhile, a drama teacher at The Learing Center in Minneapolis goes into a trance and channels Darwin:
Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.3
Footnotes:
1. Their six “testable predictions” (an attempt to perfume their hypothesis with scientific credentials) are as sloppy as they are silly. For instance, does the rhythm of flickering firelight correspond to the rhythm of human speech? [What does that have to do with semantics?] Did the lower light around a campfire prompt early hominins to rely on vocalizations (e.g., grunts) instead of gestures? [Then what about campfires during the day at lunch?] Are there “systematic shared differences across languages in the tempo and patterning of storytelling, compared with everyday speech”? If so, who cares? What does that have to do with truth in human language? Readers are welcome to look at all six “testable hypothesis” in their Conclusion (section 8) and find ways to test any of them without reliance on evolutionary just-so stories and without assuming that correlation implies causation.
2. The paper ends, like so many other Darwinist hypotheses, with a call to futureware. Somebody else, someday, may “debate and generate new evidence-based lines of enquiry”. Till that day over the rainbow (see Darwin Parody Songs, “Futureware Theme Song”), they admit it’s a “story we never tire of telling”. They will keep telling it until enough of us tire of listening.
3. Lines from King Lear (Shakespeare).
If Catherine, Daniel, Anastasia, Gaby, Robert, or their fellow “apes, including humans” [their term] who believe Darwinism had come on some of my Creation Safaris backpacking in the mountains, and sat around the campfire, they would have heard some whoppers out of my story collection – like the one about the bear that was climbing a tree after me, getting closer and closer, till I ran out of tree, and it kept coming, then bit my boot and started pulling my leg – “just like I’m pulling yours!” Would they have laughed? Or would they have used that as evidence for the evolution of human language?
We humans know the difference between a story and a truth claim. Stories are for entertainment. Truth claims are for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Truth claims are not merely utilitarian. They rely on abstract thought and are testable by laws of logic. If the Story of Evolution emerged from, and is continuous with, a long line of just-so stories, then it is just a story, with no claims to truth. Comparisons with apes, gestures, theory of mind, or signaling methods are insufficient sources of truth. Propositional truth depends on laws of logic and thoughts, which are immaterial. A truth claim may be in error, but evolving truth is not truth at all.
And face it, even a good story relies on abstract thought, reasoning, and verbal dexterity. Such things do not “emerge” from flickering campfire light.
A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs. —C. S. Lewis