Comments on: Becoming Human…

By: Clay

Clay — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:13:04 +0000

@KWombles – That’s an excellent and informative link, and I’m glad you’ve introduced it in this discussion. I’m going to have to admit though, that it appears to be written at a post-grad level, several grades above my own level. But I think perhaps the writer missed his calling, and should have been a lawyer writing boilerplate contracts instead, because he achieves maximum verbosity to explain that indeed, true thought was required to design these tools, and since language is a prerequisite for thought, the tool designer must have been capable of speech. In other words, I prefer a more succinct explanation, is what I’m sayin’.

By: KWombles

KWombles — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:24:51 +0000

It’s quite likely that groups as larger as 20-40 people would have needed to be able to communicate, and since the hunting of large animals would have been a collaborative effort, it’s likely that language predates agrarian communities significantly (potentially as far back as modern man). Here’s an interesting article that examines the likelihood that there was symbolic communication dating as far back as 200,000 years ago.

http://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/pdf/11.%20FDE%20et%20al%20Origins%20symbol%20JWP%202003.pdf

Perhaps written language helped to foster technological advances (and the subsequent neuronal rewiring). It’s a fascinating subject and one I touch on in the psychology courses I teach.

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:28:46 +0000

But by all accounts, that “shift” from nomadic to agricultural happened no sooner than 10,000 years ago. A uniform, community-wide language might have only developed after the sociological change engendered by the aggregation of large numbers of people. Small groups of 20 to 40 people may not have needed language, but groups of 100 or more would need to develop standard communication.

Alan Alda has been the voice of a PBS offering, “The Human Spark”. I’d say the “spark” was – language itself.

By: KWombles

KWombles — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:59:56 +0000

Actually, homo sapiens dates back even further, to around 400,000 years ago. Modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens, date back to 120,000 years ago. The shift from nomadic to agricultural, stationary communities and the technological shifts may be in ways comparable to the snowballing of technological breakthroughs we’ve made in the last 100 years. Perhaps, from an anthropological perspective, community numbers hit a threshhold number that allowed technological advances (the pooling of the intellectual resources: the more bodies, the more intellectually gifted simply because of the numbers). Each advance is exponential, with no need for an originating cause or divine intervention. It is a construct of complex organisms to go on forming even more complex structures.

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:32:54 +0000

Hi Sarah,
I recently learned that “they” have figured out that Egyptian civilization began in 4241 BC. That’s probably close to the first written language. We have no idea when “oral” language actually began. It may not have been all that long ago, despite Jean Auel’s speculation in her “Earth” series.

I kinda do believe in “divine intervention”, (though not “selling it”), and the Qur’An says that we were “made in the best of molds”. I think that “language” is key to “thought”, and that language may not have been around much prior to 10,000 BC. Without “thought”, what is there, instinct?

I’m open to discussion.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:41:39 +0000

Hi Clay:
Even if people didn’t change much, maybe the population needs to reach a critical mass for specialists in certain areas to develop and invent exciting new things, and for that information to be distributed. If any of us were left in the wilderness, would we really do much better than cavemen (see Survivor?) So maybe the changes are not about major biological changes at all, just enough people with enough time (and maybe enough autistic traits to obsess enough to invent things).