"The archaeological record shows clearly that the Neanderthals were less
inventive, less innovative, than the modern humans who replaced them. But
there's no denying that, like us, they had large brains. Does this imply that
even if they were rather unimaginative, they possessed other human features
such as language? IT TURNS OUT THAT NEITHER THE SIZE NOR THE EXTERNAL
APPEARANCE OF THE BRAIN IS OF MUCH USE HERE: THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY OF
READING FUNCTION WITH ADEQUATE PRECISION FROM THE BUMPS AND FISSURES ON THE
OUTSIDE OF THE BRAIN (AND STILL LESS FROM BRAIN CASTS). SO NO HELP IS
FORTHCOMING FROM THAT DIRECTION." ("The Fossil Trail, pg. 211).<<
Jim,
Is Tattersall the only book on fossil man you have read? It seems to be the
only one you quote.
Dean Falk wrote:
"But monkeys don't have language and humans do. Are there
morphological manifestations of human brains that (a) correlate with
functional lateralizations including language and (b) are capable of leaving
traces in the hominid fossil record? Indeed there are. Shape asymmetries of
the frontal and occipital lobes, known as petalias, exist in human brains
(and to a lesser degree in brains of monkeys and apes) and are statistically
associated with handedness in humans. Further, a characteristic sulcal
pattern associated with Broca's speech area in left frontal lobes is present
in human but not in ape brains. Both humanlike petalis and the pattern of
sulci associated with Broca's area have been detected on endocranial casts
(endocasts) from the early part of the hominid fossil record.
"The oldest evidence for Broca's area to date is from KNM-ER 1470, a H.
habilis specimen from Kenya, dated at approximately two million years ago.
From that date forward, brain size 'took off,' i.e., increased
autocatalytically so that it nearly doubled in the genus Homo, reaching its
maximum in Neanderthals. If hominids weren't using and refining language I
would like to know what they were doing with their autocatalytically
increasing brains (getting ready to draw pictures somehow doesn't seem like
enough)."~Dean Falk, Comments, Current Anthropology, 30:2, April, 1989, p.
141-142.
Jim, your approach is one of "explain everything away that disagrees with my
view" Why can't you ever explain how something fits into a theoretical
framework? This is what is wrong with what Christians do with science. They
make the entire world be nothing more than a collection of isolated facts.
This is the way my cat or dog view the world, isolated facts and events.
Surely we are smarter than a cat or dog.
In your view, Broca's region has no significance at all. Spears, and art work
made by beings 300-400,000 years ago have no connection with anything in
particular. Tents and dwellings from 400,000 years ago are just not important
for you. Neanderthal burials signify nothing. The gradual transition from
homo erectus to homo sapiens observed in the fossil record is of no import.
Microscopic evidence of 1.5 million year old stone tools, is a mere
coincidence which implies absolutely nothing. The lack of explanatory power
of your view is truly amazing.
Jim Bell wrote:
>>If no help, it really can't be given too much weight as evidence. But there
is another, more telling LACK that once again points to the uniqueness, and
qualitative difference, of modern man, and Glenn is right that it centers
around speech capacity:
"Speech, however, is a (somewhat) different matter from language as such.
For, to produce the sounds that are associated with modern articulate speech,
you need specialized anatomical equipment apart from the brain. Notably, you
have to have a larynx (voicebox) that is situated low in the throat,
connected to the oral cavity above by a long section of tubing (the
pharynx). This long pharynx is manipulated by the muscles of the throat to
modulate the vibrations produced at the larynx, and thereby to make the basic
sounds on which articulate language depends. Primitively, the base of the
hominoid (indeed, mammal) skull is flat. This reflects the presence of a
high larynx and a short pharynx, LIMITING THE RANGE OF SOUNDS THAT CAN BE
MADE. AMONG MODERN HUMANS IN CONTRAST, SPACE FOR A HIGH, LOOPING PHARYNX IS
CREATED BY BENDING THE BASE OF THE SKULL DOWNWARD, CREATING A CHARACTERISTIC
FLEXION." (Id.).<<
Phillip Tobias studied the larynx of various fossil men. Fagan comments:
"He was unable to study the base of Homo habilis crania as they are
fragmentary, but Homo erectus had a larynx with an equivalent position to
that of an 8-year-old modern child. He beleives that it was only after
300,000 years ago, with the appearance of archaic Homo sapiens, that the
larynx assumed its modern position, giving at least mechanical potential for
the full range of speech sounds used today."~Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From
Eden, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 87
As I have stated before, most 8-year-olds have no trouble with all the
sounds.of modern english. Besides, babies are actually able to make more
sounds than I am able to make giving them the ability to learn to speak any
modern complex language.
Schick and Toth write:
"Studies of such casts have suggested that new morphological features (which
Australopithecus did not have) appear in the brains of Early Homo and Homo
erectus: these include larger frontal and parietal lobes and prominently
enlarged Broca's and Wernicke's areas, associated with speech." ~Kathy D.
Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993), p. 219
Wernicke's area, I believe but may err, has to do with the understanding of
language. But more devastating to your suggestion is that modern people with
the type of vocal tracts that you say could not use a complex language, are
quite capable of speech.
Barnouw wrote:
>> "Although some of the earlier sterotyped notions about Neanderthals
now seem to be passe, a controversial idea has been introduced that may
revive them, it has been claimed that Neanderthals could not speak very well.
Philip Lieberman, Edmund S. Crelin, and Dennis H. Klatt (1972) have made
measurements of the neck vertebrae and the base of the skull of the man of La
Chapelle aux Saints and have concluded that Neanderthals were unable to
pronounce a number of vowels and consonants that we can pronounce today.
This does not mean that Neanderthals had no language, but Lieberman et al.
believe that linguistic communication among Neanderthals was considerably
slower and less efficeint than among ourselves.
"Criticism of the findings of Lieberman and his associates has come from
two articles in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, in which the
following points re made: (1) the brains of Neanderthals were at least as
large as those of modern humans; (2) the Sylvian fissures of the brain, as
seen in the endocranial cast of the skull of La Chapelle aux Saints, resemble
those of modern humans, implying that speech was present, (3) MODERN ADULTS
WHO HAVE FEATURES LIKE THOSE DESCRIBED BY lIEBERMAN ET AL., SUCH AS
PROGNATHISM AND FLATTENING OF THE BASE OF THE SKULL ARE QUITE ABLE TO SPEAK
COMPLEX MODERN LANGUAGES; and (4) Lieberman and his associates have
reconstructed the hyoid bone of the La Chapelle aux Saints individual in a
position TOO HIGH TO PERMIT SWALLOWING, not taking into account the influence
of upright posture and bipedalism on the position of the larnyx."~Victor
Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and
Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 151
EMPHASIS mine.
Of course, these latter facts I emphasized are to be explained away at all
cost. and we don't have to explain anything at all. We can just sit around
and be nay-sayers to whatever any scientist suggests. Life is so much easier
that way.
I might also point out that the brain sizes of neanderthal were larger than
ours.
glenn