Here is where Robin Dunbar—the famous anthropologist who came up with the social-brain hypothesis—proposes something clever. What do we humans naturally have an instinct to talk about? What is the most natural activity we use language for? Well, we gossip. We often can’t help ourselves; we have to share moral violations of others, discuss relationship changes, keep track of dramas. Dunbar measured this—he eavesdropped on public conversations and found that as much as 70 percent of human conversation is gossip. This, to Dunbar, is an essential clue into the origins of language.
