SVERKER JOHANSSON, Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Master of Philosophy in Linguistics, was born in 1961 in the university town of Lund. He’s a senior advisor at Dalarna University, has conducted research at CERN in Switzerland, and has since 2006 participated in EVOLANG, the leading international conference for research on the origins and evolution of language.

Through a bot that he programmed, Lsjbot, Johansson is behind an estimated 8 percent of all articles on Wikipedia, covering everything from fungi to municipalities in the Philippines.

In 2019, his non-fictional work LANGUAGE DAWN: WHY AND WHEN WE BEGAN TO SPEAK was published and has since sold to seven countries. In 2022, FOOTPRINTS OF LANGUAGE, the stand-alone sequel, was published, followed by WHAT’S IN A NAME? in 2023.

Agent William Crona

Published NATUR OCH KULTUR, 2024
Genre NON-Fiction / Popular science
Pages 180

rIGHTS SOLD
all rights available

In this male equivalent to Cat Bohannen’s EVE, Sverker Johansson gives a concise, entertaining and educational overview of the global migration of men.

Throughout human history, women and men have moved around the world, but not always in the same way. The traces are visible in their DNA. This book is dedicated to the journey of men, from now-extinct gene sets in Africa, via the reconstructed "Adam", common ancestor of all modern men, and follows the small group of migrants from which most people outside Africa are descended on their journey out of the primordial home.

In the diversity that then blossoms, we increasingly narrow down the European gene sets, until we concentrate entirely on what is by far one of the most common chromosomes among European men: I-M253, the chromosome that literally came in from the cold some 27,000 years ago and has been passed on from father to son in unbroken succession ever since.

But why has it become so widespread?

What is the story behind your name? In fact, why do you have a name at all? Sverker Johansson tells you.

With an eye to evolutionary history as well as specific unusual examples, he ranges across time and space to capture the diversity of naming traditions.

Depending on where we end up in time and space, a name can be determined based on the day of the week, ancestors, which evil spirits need to be tricked or what the mother sees when the child is born. In addition to first names, we can have surnames – but also parents' names, farm names, village names, children's names, caste names, middle names, generational names or nicknames based on everything from complexion via professions to television programs.

Did you know, for example, that Caligula means baby boots, that John is the most common first name on Wikipedia, that dolphins have name melodies and that Mao Zedong's middle name Ze comes from a poem from which his family for fourteen generations took their names?

Why are thousands of languages spoken in New Guinea, but only one in Madagascar?

How many Chinese languages are there?

And can dead languages truly come back to life?

In FOOTPRINTS OF LANGUAGE, the reader is taken on a linguistic journey across time and space where human diversity is the steering force. With the help of the latest language research, but also of archaeology and genetics, Johansson points out both well-trodden paths that lead to big languages as well as barely visible footprints that reveal languages few of us have heard of.

With language diversity being the central theme, FOOTPRINTS IN LANGUAGE account for the fascinating diversity of human cultures across the globe and what effects these differences have on how we speak.

By not restricting the exploration to well-known languages, the book attempts to show the full spectrum of language diversity, including languages that are “off the beaten path”. Not all of the 7,000 languages of the world can be covered in one book—but the author touches on all continents, and all major—and many minor—language families. More than 400 different languages are used to provide examples in the book, from Abkhaz to Zulu.

REVIEWS

‘Both Johansson's enthusiasm and the pursuit of public education contribute to FOOTPRINTS OF LANGUAGE ​​becoming a really educational reading experience that the language-interested reader can return to several times. Overall rating: 5/5.’
- BTJ

’Rewarding crash course in the rich diversity of languages.’
- Svenska Dagbladet

‘The journey, however, never becomes difficult, as Sverker Johansson writes fluently and easily - helped by the latest research.’
- Språktidningen

Published NATUR OCH KULTUR, 2019
Genre non-Fiction / popular science
Pages 396

RIGHTS SOLD
HUNGARY - Europa Kiádo
Italy - Ponte alle Grazie
the netherlands - MEULENHOFF BOEKERIJ
Romania - humanitas
russia - exmo
Spain - ariel/planeta
Turkey - pegasus
uk - maclehose press

Where, when and why man began to speak is one of history’s great mysteries. LANGUAGE DAWN starts out millions of years ago and progresses to the point when existing languages developed, about five thousand years ago. We are introduced to Homo Erectus and Neanderthals, to Darwin and Chomsky, and become acquainted with dolphins and nightingales. Based on the latest research in archeology, neurology, linguistics and biology, Sverker Johansson guides the reader through earlier theories and proposes an account of why and how humans started talking.

The traces lead to a period of radical shifts some one and a half million years ago, in which our African ancestors were confronted with new challenges and began to diverge from other animals. Homo erectus started living in ever larger social groups – and it seems that language played a key role.

Written in the same vein as Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, LANGUAGE DAWN is a dizzyingly erudite and tightly woven story of one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: the origins of language. Packed with astonishing examples, the book is an entertaining and stimulating deep dive for anyone who has ever contemplated why we speak the way we do.

REVIEWS

‘This magisterial study is a detective story about the deep past.’
- The Telegraph

‘ [. . .] LANGUAGE DAWN is a fascinating story in its own right, and surprisingly optimistic about human nature, in its emphasis on the necessity of trust and cooperation for language to have ever got off the ground.’
- The Guardian

‘A formidable educational journey… This is the book the linguists in Sweden have needed for so long… I demand an August prize nomination.’
- Expressen

’Johansson tells with enthusiasm and a desire to educate people. The delight is contagious.’
- Språktidningen

’This is science and popular science of the best brand, and there is no book in Swedish that comes close in terms of breadth and depth.’
- BTJ

’A fascinating and interesting overview of human language.’
- Smålandsposten