More than two million years after Homo habilis began using tools to make tools, Neanderthals made these Mousterian points. How far along do you suppose their language had come?
During the evolution of Homo four things seem to have been going on at the same time: (1) the rise of syntactical speech; (2) the formation of cooperative communities; (3) the use of tool to make other tools; and (4) the growth of the brain. Two other processes appear to have started before these four and ended while the four continued onward, but there was probably some overlap: (a) the shaping of the hand for precise grip and action and (b) modification of the leg for running.
We won't really know how speech began until we understand the full interaction of these simultaneous processes. The previous two posts looked at the relation between speech and brain. A Portuguese scholar, Antonio Vieira, has just published an ambition paper in Theory Bioscience titled, "Grammatical Equivalents of Paleolithic Tools" (abstract here). Its thesis is that "the grammatical equivalents inherent to stone tool work guide the evolution of language."
New Caledonian crows are smart enough to use tools in the wild. Like chimpanzees, they strip leaves and probe with the remains to catch insects.
Summer time is goof-around time, but I want to respond to a comment made this week by drawing attention to an essay published in the current PNAS by Alex Kacelnik, “Tools for thought or thoughts for tools?” (extract here). It’s a meditation on tool use inspired by a paper (abstract here) reporting on crows and tools. The paper describes a housebred rook whose conspecifics do not normally use tools in the wild, but this rook did spontaneously create tools including shaping wire to form hooks, use different tools in a sequence, and other actions that suggest a sharp intelligence. New Caledonian crows are known to use tools habitually, but not these rooks.
The finding is of interest to this blog because the rise of tool use is so important to the story of the human lineage. The rise of tools, language, and intelligence are commonly taken as working together. Kacelnik’s paper examines another element, motivation.
Kacelnik considers three explanations for the unexpected ability of rooks to use tools:
This group of explanations intrigues me because we see the same problem with apes and humans. Humans are like the New Caledonian crows; we use tools naturally. The rooks are like the apes; they are smart enough to use tools, but don’t do it as regularly as us. Experiments have also show that apes are intelligent enough to use language at least at the pidgin level, but they never do it in the wild.
Working on this blog has sold me completely on the notion that the central evolutionary events leading to speech were the ones that created a social interdependence that motivates us to share perceptions.. That's why I was pleased to find that Kacelnik’s essay cites Michael Tomasello point that it is the social structure of humans that uses collaboration and shared goals, not intelligence, that makes us use language. We have, says Kacelnk, “a unique motivation to share psychological states with others.”
So one comment posted this week that overlooks the peculiar human psychology did irk me. It came in a lively defense of Derk Bickerton's book, and mainly I was glad to see the comments. Despite my grave doubts about his latest book, he’s a hero of mine and has been for over 25 years. But one of the comments (here) included the note, “If the FOXP2 gene is responsible for language then where is my talking finch, gorilla, and ferret? Would perhaps language somehow not provide an advantage to those animals as it does to us humans?” I’m skipping over the fact that nobody says FOXP2 is “responsible for” language to address the more serious issue of the talking finch, gorilla, and ferret. Language seems so useful to us that we can suppose any species would benefit from it, but that overlooks the motivation issue. Gorillas, ferrets, and even finches lack social structures that permit collaboration and social sharing, so they have no motive to speak, no matter how well their brains and genes might be able to handle the task.
Thomas Edison was a well-publicized inventor. Was there an even greater long-ago inventor who gave us language?
Last week’s
post drew a comment (here)
that said language began, “The same way
the wheel usage and invention began.” It’s a commonsense idea and worth pursuing.
Is language a technology, an instinct, or something else?
The subtitle
of the paper discussed last week is, “Language as Technology.” The phrase built
on an idea quoted from Edward Sapir’s
Language:
An Introduction to the Study of Speech
, “Walking is an inherent, biological function of man [but] speech is a
non-instinctive acquired, ‘cultural function.’” [pp. 3-4]
Was Sapir right? Or was Steven Pinker correct-when he wrote, “Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. …[It is] a biological adaptation to communicate information.” [The Language Instinct, p. 5]
Acheulean hand axes were made by people who paid close attention to the details of the stone they worked on.
At the same time that the human lineage developed speech toolmaking was growing more elaborate. Did these two trends influence one another? The answer obviously is yes, if you believe that speech depends on general human capacities, and just as obviously the answer is no if you believe that speech depends on a specialized language faculty. So I was interested to run across a recent paper that concludes, “… the archaeological record of technological change … document[s] … engagement with materials … [and] neural circuits supporting E[arly] S[tone] A[ge] toolmaking partially overlap with language circuits, strongly suggesting that these behaviours share a foundation in more general human capacities for complex, goal-directed action and are likely to have evolved in a mutually reinforcing way.” It is one more bit of evidence in the humanist side, one more problem for the proponents of specialized modules.
Recent Comments