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FAO: Lira
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| Desiderata |
I heard the other day that archeologist have date back language (at least a more intelligent form of language than grunting and clicking, which I agree are a form of language) but back to topic, archeologist dated intellectual language back 26,000 years ago to women playing word games.
Now before you answer please don't look at the obvious and say, who is to say grunting and clicking isn't intellectual language.
I just want to know if this is true or not?
I'm curious to the origin of intellectual language. |
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| Lira |
Source? Their claims are probably way less exciting than it sounds, but I need to read about their findings first. Are you sure that's not just a "we know that by then something akin to a modern human language already existed"?
Keep in mind that, if humans left Africa around 50k years ago, and everybody speaks (despite the stereotype, "primitive peoples" often have very complex languages, syntax wise), it's not unreasonable to believe that language as we know it emerged before we got the hell out of the cradle of humanity.
As for the origins of what we would be comfortable to call language, we know very little about it. Unlike fossils that you can dig up and study, our stupid forefathers didn't record their language (because hunting and gathering was so much more fun!) and, to make things worse, visual representations of language (i.e. written language) are very recent in human history... so there's little they can help us with. All we can tell is that language then couldn't be too different from what we see today, though nobody knows for sure how we got where we are.
There are several cool ideas about the emergence of language, for example:- Language as mega-grooming: When you live in a community with 5 people, it's not hard to bond with all of them. You groom each one of them for one hour each day and you still have plenty of time to do whatever you want. In a group with 10 people, there's still free time aplenty. 100 people? Well, now that's tricky. Because we developed super doper brains to process the necessary social information to know who likes what and who did what to whom, we also acquired the necessary skills to make linguistic skills and, using parts of our body that we already used for other reasons, we found a much more clever way to bond;
- The Scheherazade Effect: As a good storyteller, I can tell you that girls love it. Hell, we pay to watch stand-up comedians amuse us for hours on end with nothing but language, and literature geeks are expected to be womanisers. So language came about as a means to pull girls. Great, eh? And it was also handy because, once you nailed it, you could also maintain the relationship with words and confessions;
- Instrumental Hypothesis: What's the coolest thing you can do with language? You can get people to do stuff for you while you do bugger all. Well, sure, maybe nobody is going to help you unless you stop arseing around and do some work along with them, but you can't find minions unless you can tell them what you want them to do, right? But, what we do know is that animals with a proto-language have "words" for specific references. For example, Ethiopian monkeys have specific cries for "Hawk!", "Snake!" and "OMG, it's a lion get in the ca-- no, wait, we don't have cars, go climb that tree!". It's not hard to imagine that, with time, this well useful tool became more and more sophisticated, so we were able to say things more interesting than "Run for cover!". Unfortunately, we became able to say things way less interesting than that as well.
These are some of the least nutty ideas I know, and none of them come with a precise timeline... but all this must've happened way way way before 26k years ago. Otherwise we need to go back to the sketching board and try to find out how exactly everybody speaks if language wasn't around when we set off to populate the globe.
Edit: If you like this sort of thing, read the "Studies in the Evolution of Language" published by the Oxford University Press. The whole collection is amazing, though some books are a tad bit too scholarly. "The Talking Ape" was written for laymen, as I recall it, and "The Origin of Language" is a nice read if you know a thing or two about linguistics and you happen to be a Chomskian. |
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| Desiderata |
My friend told me about this the other day and I been wanting to ask you, so I will ask him for a source.
I did look on the web for that very information he gave me but nothing came up....Go figure. He is a little sketchy for being a computer forensic master mind. ::shrug::
I will get you the source or I will find out that this is only what he believes. But when a person is a computer forensic you tend to trust that he has some idea on what he is talking about. He is almost 60 now as well. :o |
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| Lira |
| It's cool, but he probably just blew it a bit out of proportion because it was exciting to him - or, if he read a news article about it, the reporter must've misunderstood what the original authors of the study meant and came to a much more radical conclusion :) |
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| Desiderata |
| Hey again. Is it true in your field that linguist agrees that Humpback Whales have the most complex language out of the whole animal kingdom, including us? |
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| tubularbills |
| lira, where did your go? |
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| Sphere City |
| his are in my hand and his fingers are in my ass |
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| infiniteJEST |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
[*]The Scheherazade Effect: As a good storyteller, I can tell you that girls love it. Hell, we pay to watch stand-up comedians amuse us for hours on end with nothing but language, and literature geeks are expected to be womanisers. So language came about as a means to pull girls. Great, eh? And it was also handy because, once you nailed it, you could also maintain the relationship with words and confessions;
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Language to attract women, eh. We still talking about primitive man here? :p |
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| Lira |
Last week was birds wearing apron week for the glory of the Stu. It's just an ordinary week now, hence my titlessness.
| quote: | Originally posted by infiniteJEST
Language to attract women, eh. We still talking about primitive man here? :p |
I exaggerated a bit (well, a lot, really :p), but a similar claim was made by Geoffrey Miller [pdf] a decade ago.
Oh, and Dez, I've never heard anything about whales. It's actually counter-intuitive: if we're primates, and we've got the most complex language system in the animal kingdom, I'd expect some other primate to take the second spot (though, of course, this doesn't have to be the case). Where did you read that? |
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| Desiderata |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
I exaggerated a bit (well, a lot, really :p), but a similar claim was made by Geoffrey Miller [pdf] a decade ago.
Oh, and Dez, I've never heard anything about whales. It's actually counter-intuitive: if we're primates, and we've got the most complex language system in the animal kingdom, I'd expect some other primate to take the second spot (though, of course, this doesn't have to be the case). Where did you read that? |
http://www.hhmi.org/news/suzuki20060321.html
This is a more broad view of Animal and Human communication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language |
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| Desiderata |
I didn't read this correctly, So I think you already answered my question. |
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| Lira |
I'm sceptical. Apparently, all they found are recurring patterns and even they admit their language seems to convey too little information - which is exactly what you'd expect a language to do. I haven't read the study but they only mention syntax... which by itself doesn't really tell anything. |
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