Experiment
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The activity above allows you to take part in a language evolution experiment.
Instead of learning whole languages, you need to try and remember sequences of coloured lights.
When you click on the centre of the colour control, someone else's sequence will be automatically picked from the tree on the right. Try to reproduce it as best you can by clicking the coloured panels in sequence.
The system will then put your response as a new "language" onto the tree. Someone else will have to try and learn your sequence later!
This tree shows all the games that have been played so far. Each dot is one game, and you can see what sequence of lights that player produced by moving your mouse over the dot.
When you play a game, it will be added as a new branch growing out of the sequence you were given to memorise. In this way, you can see the cultural evolution of sequences as a family tree.
The different colours show how easy the sequences are to memorise, with colder colours indicating easier games. You may notice that the games evolve to be easier and easier as the tree grows, so the leaves of the tree are bluer than the root in the middle (shown as a red dot with a circle round it).
