On Fri, 12 Jul 1996 21:56:56, Glenn Morton wrote:
SJ>Not so! I accept that H. habilis was capable of rudimentary
>speech and have posted same. For example, on Sun, 15 Oct 95
>21:23:22 EDT I posted to the Group a response to Glenn:
I presume Glenn now retracts his claim that I "have always
dismissed speech in habilis"? :-)
SJ>The bottom line is that *only* Homo sapiens had a *proven*
>complex language capacity and that suddenly emerged only 35,000 years
>ago. This is broadly compatible with the picture in Genesis 2-11.
GM>What is your evidence that "complex language capacity ...
>suddenly emerged only 35,000 year ago."?
I have already posted same. Here it is again:
"These days, many anthropologists favor a recent, rapid origin of
language-principally because of the abrupt change in behavior seen in
the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. Randall White, a New York
University archeologist, argued in a provocative scientific paper
almost a decade ago that evidence of various forms, of human activity
earlier than 100,000 years ago implies "a total absence of anything
that modern humans would recognize as language." Anatomically modern
humans had evolved by this time, he concedes, but they had not yet
"invented" language in a cultural context. This would come much
later: "By 35,000 years ago, these populations . . . had mastered
language and culture as we presently know them." (Leakey R., "The
Origin of Humankind", Phoenix: London, 1994, p125)
"Although, as I've said, language does not fossilize, the products of
human hands can, in principle, give some insight into language. When
we talk about artistic expression, as we did in the previous chapter,
we are aware of modern human minds at work, and that implies a modern
level of language. Can stone tools also furnish an understanding of
the language capacities of the toolmakers? This was the task Glynn
Isaac faced when he was asked to present a paper on the origin and
nature of language at the New York Academy of Sciences in 1976. He
looked at the complexity of stone-tool industries from their
beginning more than 2 million years ago to the Upper Paleolithic
Revolution 35,000 years ago. He was not interested as much in the
tasks that people performed with the tools as in the order the
toolmakers imposed on their implements. Imposition of order is a
human obsession; it is a form of behavior that demands a
sophisticated spoken language for its fullest elaboration. Without
language, the arbitrariness of human-imposed order would be
impossible. The archeological record shows that the imposition of
order is slow to emerge in human prehistory-glacially so. We saw in
chapter 2 that Oldowan tools, which date from 2.5 million years ago
to about 1.4 million years ago, are opportunistic in nature.
Toolmakers apparently were concerned mostly with producing sharp
flakes without regard to shape. The so-called core tools, such as
scrapers, choppers, and discoids, were by-products of this process.
Even the implements in Acheulean tool assemblages, which followed the
Oldowan and lasted until about 250,000 years ago, display imposition
of form only minimally. The teardrop-shaped handaxe was probably
produced according to some form of mental template, but most of the
other items in the assemblage were Oldowanlike in many ways;
moreover, only about a dozen tool forms were in the Acheulean kit.
Neanderthals, made tools from prepared flakes, and these assemblages,
including the Mousterian, comprised perhaps sixty identifiable tool
types. But the types remained unchanged for more than 200,000 years
a technological stasis that seems to deny the workings of the fully
human mind. Only when the Upper Paleolithic cultures burst onto the
scene 35,000 years ago did innovation and arbitrary order become
pervasive. Not only were new and finer tool types produced but the
tool types that characterized Upper Paleolithic assemblages changed
on a time scale of millennia rather than hundreds of millennia.
Isaac interpreted this pattern of technological diversity and change
as implying the gradual emergence of some form of spoken language.
The Upper Paleolithic Revolution, he suggested, signaled a major
punctuation in that evolutionary trajectory. Most archeologists
agree generally with this interpretation, although there are
differences of opinion over what degree of spoken language earlier
toolmakers had-if any. Unlike Nicholas Toth, Thomas Wynn, of the
University of Colorado, believes that Oldowan culture in its general
features was apelike, not human. "Nowhere in this picture need we
posit elements such as language," he notes, in a jointly authored
article in the journal Man, in 1989. The manufacture of these simple
tools required little cognitive capacity, he argues, and therefore
was not human in any way" (Leakey R., "The Origin of Humankind",
Phoenix: London, 1994, pp133-1344)
Here are some others:
"Homo erectus....was prevalent throughout Eurasia and Africa during
the Pleistocene Epoch, also called the Ice Age, because of the
recurrent cold weather that produced the glaciers of this epoch.
Homo erectus had an average brain size of 1,000 cc, but the shape of
the skull indicates that the areas of the brain necessary for memory,
intellect, and language were not well developed.ro-Magnon Cro-Magnon
(Homo sapiens sapiens) people lived about 40,000 years ago. Their
brain capacity was similar to ours (about 1,360 cc). They were such
accomplished hunters that some researchers believe they are
responsible for the extinction, during the Upper Pleistocene Epoch,
of many, large mammalian animals, such as the giant sloth, mammoth,
saber- toothed tiger, and giant ox. Because language would have
facilitated their ability to hunt such large animals, it's quite
possible that meaningful speech began at this time." " (Mader S.,
"Biology", Wm. C. Brown: Indiana, Third Edition, 1990, pp435,437)
GM>One culture in Europe started producing large quantities of
>preservable art.
Agreed, but it was not just confined to "One culture in Europe":
"When art first appeared, presumably around 40,000 B.P., it spread
quickly. Within a mere 5,000 years-barely the blink of an eye on
paleontological time scales-the work of early artists popped up in
several corners of the globe. Archaeologists have found more than
10,000 sculpted and engraved objects in hundreds of locations across
Europe, southern Africa, northern Asia and Australia. The styles
range from realistic to abstract, and the materials include stone,
bone, antler, ivory, wood, paint, teeth, claws, shells and clay that
have been carved, sculpted and painted to represent animals, plants,
geometric forms, landscape features and human beings-virtually every
medium and every kind of subject that artists would return to
thousands of years later. This creative explosion is best documented
in Europe, largely because that is where most of the excavations have
taken place." (Lemonick M.D., "Odysseys of Early Man", TIME,
February 13, 1995, p46)
GM>Anatomically modern humans elsewhere didn't produce such art.
Agreed. "Anatomically modern humans elsewhere didn't produce such
art", before 40,000 BP. Of course, even after 40,000 BP not all
"Anatomically modern humans" produced "such art". Even after the
emergence of artistic ability, not everyone is an artist.
GM>How do you know that art is correlated to language?
I had already posted this:
"Where does this body of evidence, represented in figure 7.2, lead
us? If we were to be guided only by the technological component of
the archeological record, we would view language as having had an
early start, slow progress through most of human prehistory, and an
explosive enhancement in relatively recent times. This is a
compromise on the hypothesis derived from the anatomical evidence.
The archeological record of artistic expression, however, allows for
no such compromise. Painting and engraving in rock shelters and
caves enters the record abruptly, about 35,000 years ago. The
evidence in support of earlier artistic work, such as ocher sticks
and incised curves on bone objects, is rare at best and dubious at
worst. If artistic expression is taken as the only reliable
indicator of spoken language-as the Australian archeologist Iain
Davidson, for one, insists-then language not only became fully modem
recently but also was initiated recently. "The making of images to
resemble things can only have emerged prehistorically in communities
with shared systems of meanings," Davidson states in a recent paper
coauthored with William Noble, his colleague at the University of New
England. "Shared systems of meanings" are mediated, of course,
through language. Davidson and Noble argue that artistic expression
was a medium through which referential language developed, not that
art was made possible by language. Art had to predate language, or
at least emerge in parallel with it. The appearance of the first art
in the archeological record therefore signals the first appearance of
spoken, referential language." (Leakey R., "The Origin of
Humankind", Phoenix: London, 1994, pp135-137)
GM>You have already acknowledged that h.habilis had
>rudimentary speech but he made no preservable art.
Agreed. But having only "rudimentary speech" is not enough for
truly representational art:
"Our closest ancestors and cousins, Homo erectus, the Neanderthals,
and others, possessed mental abilities of a high order, as indicated
by their range of tools and other artifacts. But only Homo sapiens
shows direct evidence for the kind of abstract reasoning, including
numerical and aesthetic modes, that we identify as distinctively
human. All indications of ice-age reckoning-the calendar sticks and
counting blades-belong to Homo sapiens. And all the ice-age art-the
cave paintings, the Venus figures, the horse- head carvings, the
reindeer bas-reliefs-was done by our species. By evidence now
available, Neanderthal knew nothing of representational art." (Gould
S.J., "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History",
Penguin: London, 1991, p320)
GM>And the Azilian culture from 9-12,000 yrs. ago produced almost
>no art but they presumably could talk. I see no evidence for your
>assertion.
According to the EB, the Azilian culture did produce art:
"Azilian culture, of Late Upper Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic
Europe, especially France and Spain, preceded by the richer and more
complex Magdalenian culture, and more or less contemporary with such
cultures as the Tardenoisian, Maglemosian, Ertebolle, and Asturian.
Stone tools of the Azilian were mostly extremely small, called
microliths, and made to fit into a handle of bone or antler.
Projectile points with curved backs and end scrapers were used- bone
tools included punches, "wands" (of uncertain use), and flat harpoons
often made of red deer antler. Art was confined to geometric
drawings made on pebbles using red and black pigments. The big game
of the Fourth Glacial Period had disappeared, and the Azilian people
and their contemporaries ate mollusks, fish, birds, and small mammals
that were probably trapped and snared." ("Encyclopaedia Britannica",
Benton: Chicago, 15th edition, 1984, i:699).
But in any event, not producing art and not being able to produce art
are two different things.
God bless.
Steve
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| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ sjones@iinet.net.au |
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| Perth, West Australia v (My opinions, not my employer's) |
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| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ sjones@iinet.net.au |
| Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ http://www.iinet.net.au/~sjones |
| Perth, West Australia v (My opinions, not my employer's) |
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