>Gee whiz, ask Glenn a simple question...and you're apt to get things like:
>
><<Your assertion that you know of know experts who believe that language
>occurred prior to 30,000 years ago says more about your reading list than
>anything else. I have given you 7 experts who say that some kind of
> language
>existed long before 30,000 years ago.>>
>
>Take a look at what I actually wrote:
>
><< But there is no evidence for the
>complex mode of lingual communication necessary for this to occur, either
>anatomically or mentally. No expert to my knowledge believes there was such
>complex communication back then. The beginnings of lingual capacity,
> perhaps, but not modern language.>>
>
Gee, Jim, this is not what came to my computer from your quotation. I can
forward you the original but if mine matches the archive, you have just
selectively quoted yourself.
The original note from you said:
<<I need some clarification, Glenn. It seems to me this part of your theory is
dependent on "lost evidence." Am I right? For example, in order to say
"possibly", you must believe in the ability to pass on, orally, a tradition
(there is no written tradition, of course). But there is no evidence for the
complex mode of lingual communication necessary for this to occur, either
anatomically or mentally. No expert to my knowledge believes there was such
complex communication back then. The beginnings of lingual capacity, perhaps,
but not modern language. 30K years ago is the "first time we can be sure that
people possessed articulate speech, whereas there is no way in which we can be
certain of this in the case of any earlier group." [Tattersall @245]>>
By stopping your quotation where you did, you conveniently cut out the part
that added a lot of understanding to your post and to my reply. When you said
that 30K was the earliest sure language, that simply is not true. It also
places the context of your paragraph into the "prior than 30K" topic rather
than from 2.4-5.5 MYR context. It was not as clear as you think it was.
>So you see, I was talking about the kind of complex language necessary to
> plug what appears to be a gaping (aping?) hole in your theory. EVEN IF we
>grant the "capability of language" (e.g., Falk) or "some kind of language"
>(Morton, above) to Neanderthal, your theory demands much more, stretching
>back to homo erectus and complex lingual capacity. That's clearly what I was
>talking about,and you missed it.
I admit I missed it. Still do. And citing everything up to the point of the
30k context making sentence is not good quotation.
>
>But with that kind of language the culture would have been more complex than
>we find it. That's called predictability, a word you like so much. Well,your
>theory fails on this point. Perhaps that's why you tilted your lance down
>from the windmills to my backside with things like:
>
You seem to think that language=complex culture. Have you ever heard of the
Fuegians? They are the American Indians who lived at Tierra del Fuega at the
southern tip of South America. Their culture was very, very simple and they
have a fully modern language.
"The Fuegians still lived, a few years ago, in little groups of a few
families, just large enough to feed themselves without going beyond the
resources of their hunting territory. The main part of their food was
acquired by hunting and fishing, but in order to bear the periods of famine,
they must have depended on the food resources provided by wild plants and
small animals, even insects. They lived in rounded huts built with branches
and brush and huddled around a small hearth, fed as much as possible by pieces
of broken bones. They had great resistance to cold: They wore only a square
piece of skin slung across their backs, just big enough to cover them when
they squatted, their backs turned against the wind. Their domestic implements
were reduced to the minimum: baskets woven in the simplest manner, harpoons
with stone points, rocks used as hammers or pounders, thick end-scrapers, and
knives. It is impossible to find in the recent world a clearer example of
what the Neanderthal mode of life must have been."~Andre Leroi Gourhan, The
Hunters of Prehistory, transl. Claire Jacobson, (New York: Atheneum, 1989), p.
94-95
>But that is just what the experts YOU call in AT MOST believe. Read them,
>Glenn. That's just what they say. They do not believe, for example, homo
>erectus to be "fully human." Or neanderthal. No evolutionist does. That's
> why they call modern man MODERN man. That's why it's called evolution. "By
> 300,000 years ago Homo erectus was evolving toward fully modern man..."
[Lambert @ 134, someone who DISAGREES with me about human evolution]
>
>What does "evolving toward fully modern man" mean, Glenn?
It means his body was becoming like ours. His skull had clear evidence that
he already had the wiring for speech. I already believe that he had the image
of God so that was not evolving Jim. I also pointed out that there was a guy
with a brain of 108 cc who was an honors math student and socially normal.
Erectus had lots more brains than that guy. Lots of cc's in your brain does
not = lots of intelligence; and the lack of cc's in your brain does not = lack
of intelligence and lack of speech. (see Is Your Brain Really Necessary?
Science Dec. 12,1980, p. 1232-1233)
>
>So the evolutionary experts believe in incipient humanity. Fine. Yet you
> have no qualms in trotting out these guys to support your theory.
So? They believe in evolution and you have no problem bringing them out to
support your anti-evolutionary position. Why is what is good for the goose is
not good for the gander?
> But since they believe in incipient humanity, evolving upward, how can you
>in the same breath shout from the rooftops that you don't?
Because I don't. They do not believe what I believe about the origin of
humanity. But when I am talking about the anthropological evidence, I am not
talking about the origin of humanity. Within my view, I am talking about the
time between the flood and us.
Are you saying that someone must believe
whatever the author of a book they cite believes? I guess you have become an
evolutionist. Tattersall is an evolutionist, you know.
>You are at cross purposes with your own experts. No wonder your theory has
>such trouble on the factual side.
You too seem at cross-purposes with your evolutionary experts. From the
above, I can conclude that this is an admission from you that your views are
in factual trouble. But the problem is that no one knows your views about the
scientific data other than you are agin' 'em. as we say down here.
Jim, I have asked you before to give us some idea of your view. How you think
it happened. But you have always avoided that preferring to snipe. Anyone can
snipe. It takes hard work to put a view together.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm