Could Navigation Be the Key to Language?

This article analyses navigation and language parsing as two instances of the same abstract computation, and suggests that the tool needed may have evolved to serve the former task, and was then reused for the latter. Supporting evidence for the idea, based on the authors’ concept of ‘songline’ navigation, is discussed in the context of current linguistic, psychological and neuroscience research. The discussion is concluded with an outline of a number of experiments that could shed further light on the subject.