I start with an explanation of what the “ecology of language” means and how speakers and signers must be understood as the most direct form of that ecology and as mediators and filters of the effects of socioeconomic ecologies on language evolution. I then highlight various insights that have been gained recently, from the past half-millennium of the dispersal of Indo-European languages through colonization, about the deterministic influence of the external ecology of a language (as opposed to the internal ecology which lies within a language itself) on its evolution. From this, I proceed to show why one must also factor in the role of ecology, chiefly in the form of the scaffolding provided by the anatomical and mental infrastructures, as well as by population structure, to account for the protracted and incremental phylogenetic evolution of language in the hominin species. To what extent does this inclusive conception of “ecology” shed light on the successive exaptations hominins made that have resulted in modern languages. Finally, I show how this approach enables us to address the following questions: How did typological linguistic diversity evolve? What kind of role did contact (of populations and of languages) play in the diversification of languages.
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