The book has shown how the unchanging mission of the Dominican Order has played out in the life of the English Province when stamped in the wax of different ages and cultures marked by the temperaments of particular individuals. Through a return to the primary sources, by removing the filters of an earlier hagiography or narrow regionalism, the books establishes patterns of growth and decline, and identifies the primary forces at work in those patterns. Where the early chapters show especially what was owed to lay patrons, later chapters show what was owed as well to Dominicans such as Cardinal Howard, Thomas Worthington, Dominic Aylward, Bede Jarrett and Vincent McNabb. Lay benefactors changed across the centuries. While the founding medieval benefactors were figures close to the royal courts, the patrons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were recusant nobles with little relationship to the court after the ‘Glorious Revolution’. The major lay benefactors after the mid-nineteenth century came from the newly wealthy.

The development and expansion of communication skills occurs across our entire lifespan. However, the foundations are established in our early years. In this chapter, we define communication and distinguish between different types of communication. We describe stages in the development of communication skills in the early years, explore the key achievements associated with each stage, and identify features that may indicate concerns at each stage. Finally, we discuss the links between oral and written communication skills and we suggest strategies for stimulating and supporting communication development across the early years.

After millennia of cooling, the Last Glacial Maximum reached an extreme. Every species adjusted, even in the tropics. Humans responded with new social organization: communities pooled resources to face issues of leadership, forming confederations that pooled resources. After the coldest moment – 21,500 years ago – migrants moved to newly fertile lands as temperature rose almost ceaselessly for millennia. Intensive food gathering was accompanied by productive institutions: architecture for permanent homes, textiles, ceramics, and workshops for visual representation. Eurasiatic-speakers moved westward across Siberia; others moved both north and south in eastern Asia and between Africa and western Asia. New details on American settlement now reveal two groups of Asian voyagers who followed the “kelp highway” just offshore. The main group formed settlements along the Pacific littoral, expanding inland from points as far as southern Chile by 19,000 years ago. By the end of the Pleistocene, the achievements of early humanity included occupying most of Earth, supplementing foraging with production, exquisite visual representations, and dependable adaptability.