Madeleine Beekman

Photograph by Janneke Calis

About The Author

Madeleine Beekman is professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia. In the academic year of 2020–21, Beekman was a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), which is where the idea for The Origin of Language was born. She currently lives with her husband in Australia’s northern tropical rainforest, where she can observe the endangered cassowary from her office. She has two adult daughters and a tiny granddaughter.

Books by Madeleine Beekman

The Origin of Language

How We Learned to Speak and Why

In a radical new story about the birth of our species, The Origin of Language argues that it was not hunting, fighting, or tool-making that forced early humans to speak, but the inescapable need to care for our children.

Hardcover

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