How did human language originate?

[untermensche]

Anywhere is ambiguous. It is meant as a specific region of the world.

But better, randomly pick a thousand people that share a genetic profile which shows ancestry to one geographical region, and then pick another.

It's been done of course. Done with tribes found isolated deep in jungles. Done with people isolated on islands.

Human language has not been here that long.

No group differences.

The human ability to acquire language appears to not have changed since it first appeared.

Which is not to say it can't change, but it would have to change in an individual and then offspring of that individual would eventually have to be the only remaining humans.

 

[fromderinside]

For your addited enjoyment: Language as shaped by the brain http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/168484/1/download10.pdf

Cultural change and growth, not evolution, arises over time due to the abilities of humans to transmit information with language, especially written language.

First a tiny comment: Humans are animals before they are humans since they arose from animals. So analogizing strictly with humans is nonsensical on its face.

OK, I'll bite with this question: Is the waggle dance of the fighting fish evolved signal or culture.

My take is that since the autonomic NS of fishes are strongly biased to parasympathetic innervation that FF waggle dance is a signal evolved from existing cultural fight or flight evolution.

So it seems reasonable to find roots of language evolving from culture evolution. Seems there were stone tools before archaeological evidence of speech capability. In fact most evolution of brain theories find that tool making arose, flattened thumb, before speech. This also seems to be reflected in later acceleration of brain increase from homo habilis to immediate progenitors of homo erectus, then again with the more recent move to neanderthal and cromagnon man. Even with the differences between the successful cromagnon elimination of neanderthal it seems both tools and social complexity propelled those events. Of course one must never ignore environmental change as a probable driver, especially over the past two or three million years.

Here it is clear that the move from small brained erect primates didn't take off until about 2 1/2 million years ago in Africa during times of extreme climate fluctuations leading to homo habilis. It is here that these lines of hominid moved from crude tools, opportunistic tools to crafted tools. Still there is a long period before between homo habilis and homo erectus when tool making again increased in complexity, remaining there for about 600 k years until pregenerators of h sapiens neanderthalis and h Sapiens Sapiens arose.

This broad brush stuff is nice, but, the rubber meets the road with the genetics of complex speech. Here is one of the recent studies relating two gene complexes related to complex speech disorders.

To your comment that human ability to acquire langage is static I ask how about autism and its apparent increase in modern western society over the past five generations. To acquaint you with this topic I provide a link to a whole article on the topic from a genetics perspective: Molecular networks implicated in speech-related disorders: FOXP2 regulates the SRPX2/uPAR complex https://academic.oup.com/hmg/articl...lecular-networks-implicated-in-speech-related

a tidbit from the abstract:

In a patient with polymicrogyria of the left rolandic operculum, a novel FOXP2 mutation (p.M406T) was found in the leucine-zipper (dimerization) domain. p.M406T partially impaired the FOXP2 regulation of SRPX2 promoter activity, whereas that of the uPAR promoter remained unchanged. Together with recently described FOXP2-CNTNAP2 and SRPX2/uPAR links, the FOXP2-SRPX2/uPARnetwork provides exciting insights into molecular pathways underlying speech-related disorders.

conclusion bottom line:

The emerging picture arising from the study of various speech-related disorders (RE, DVD, BPP) is that of a complicated and intertwined network of regulation and interaction comprising FOXP2, uPAR, SRPX2 as well as CNTNAP2. Moreover, the situation is likely to be considerably more complex: FOXP2 certainly has many more functional targets (13,14), and uPAR(38,39) as well as SRPX2 (40,41) expression can be modulated by other transcription factors. ....... As such, it will be crucial to identify and study each of them, and then try to integrate how and when they may interfere with each other and with the development/functioning of speech-related areas and networks. From this viewpoint, the identification of the FOXP2-SRPX2/uPARfunctional and genetic link, and its alteration by a FOXP2 pathogenic mutation, represent important entry points for deciphering the complicated regulatory networks of molecules that go awry in speech-related disorders. Together with recently described FOXP2-CNTNPA2 genetic and SRPX2/uPAR proteomic links, the present findings make novel genetic and molecular links between distinct phenotypes that share clinical, epidemiological and neurobiological features, including autism, epilepsy of speech-related areas and developmental speech and language disorders.

Again, enjoy.

 

[untermensche]

First a tiny comment: Humans are animals before they are humans since they arose from animals. So analogizing strictly with humans is nonsensical on its face.

Yes tiny.

We see it clearly. It is language that allows ideas to become more complex and grow.

Language does not become more complex but the ideas it can express do.

Human cultural advancement is a consequence of the language ability.

Not a cause.

What is your explanation for Diamond's "Great Leap Forward"? This is sudden advancement to a place other similar species could not go.

 

[fromderinside]

What is your explanation for Diamond's "Great Leap Forward"? This is sudden advancement to a place other similar species could not go.

About one and one half million years of rapid climate changes in cradle of human origins. Lakes seen to appear and disappear in less than one to two hundred thousand years several times between Lucy's baby and homo habilis. Gotta keep up. It's like most other punctuate this and punctuate that foolishness. Opening and closing niches rapidly leading to increase of niche filling with concomitant rapid gene restructuring (competing genes at alleles yano). Rate of mutation remains the same while environmental change provides opportunites for increase for expression. Duh.

Thre were at least three surges in brain size.. First homo habilis goes beyond homo lets call it lucy, then homo habilis goes to homo erectus, then homo erectus goes to human. All can be traced to advances in tool use society and climate variables.

The reason cormagnon didn't encroach was because until weakening grip of ice age led to window for cogmagnon with superior culture was not able to successfully enter and take over neanderthal realm. Besides neanderthal had larger brain cromagnon which runs counter to such claims as you make. Their problem was more insular social structure and window of climate friendliness for cormagnon.

Please note since I was editing this post when you wrote yours this post makes your subsequent comments moot. Keep. up.

Oh, and there's the critical point between 100 and 70 thousand years ago where mating individuals dropped below 40k, which probably took place among cromagnons before elimination of neanderthal.

 

[untermensche]

What is your explanation for Diamond's "Great Leap Forward"? This is sudden advancement to a place other similar species could not go.

About one and one half million years of rapid climate changes in cradle of human origins. Lakes seen to appear and disappear in less than one to two hundred thousand years several times between Lucy's baby and homo habilis. Gotta keep up.

You haven't addressed the circumstances at all.

Cro-Magnon had plenty of time to encroach upon Neanderthal but did not.

Then suddenly something happens "The Great Leap Forward", and Neanderthal is soon extinct with Cro-Magnon in complete domination living in places it could not before.

Try to keep up.

 

[fromderinside]

I answered in my prior post.

 

[untermensche]

I answered in my prior post.

I made no claims about brain size beyond a complex brain could possibly develop a language-like capacity. I made claims about the apparent sudden emergence and utility of the human language capacity.

And Cro-Magnons facing such hardships that their numbers dwindled supports Chomsky's theory that a single mutation that allowed the language capacity could eventually become universal as all those individuals without the trait would disappear.

Cro-Magnons were essentially modern humans. A little ice would not halt their progress. If they had the language capacity. Without it, possibly?

 

[fromderinside]

You really, really, need to treat Burt and Trivers. Genes are extant in number at almost all possible alleles. Any rapid change in opportunity would lead to many being expressed at once given new advantage in scarcity of this or that gene. There need be no mutation, tghere need be only a change in probability that this or that gene would be advantaged given change in competition factors and genetic associations. As for neanderthal it seems likely they had fairly advanced language. but with relatively little demand for s=extensive communication among group members since theiir groups appear to be significantly smaller and less plastic than crogmagnon. It is the pressure of environmental severity that limited groupings in h neanderthal and kept out h crogmagnos all together before about 80 thousand years ago.

Examine the record. Water locked up in glaciers began to diminish after about 90 thousand years ago to the point where land bridges for aborigines were eliminated by rising seas about 45 thousand years ago. This is the window we're arguing about.

Besides, as I pointed out earlier the large increases in brain size occurred between h Australopithecus about three and a half million years ago, which retained about chimp brain size, and h habilis -h erectus, which saw brain increase to around 800 cc, and which arose about two and a half million years ago and between h habilis - h erectus and h sapiens neanderthals - h sapiens sapiens which saw brain size increase to the neighborhood of 1600 cc. We can dice and slice, but the major brain size increases are best groups in this three part description which may represent several different species in each grouping.

Still, we are missing the point of the genetic articles I presented which is that language genetics are dynamic and changing up to the present. This pretty much take one of te main pillars out from Chomsky's fixed language, single mutation, argument.

 

[untermensche]

Here is the earth about 100,000 years ago:



The caption from the article. The article has nothing to do with the argument. It just provided the picture.

ICE AGE: How the world looked 100,000 years ago when polar bears were able to mix with brown bears by travelling over ice to where Ireland is today (circled red)

https://www.sott.net/article/231368-Its-polar-o-bear-Scientists-reveal-giant-mammals-ancestry-can-be-traced-to-IRELAND

This is about the extent of the last ice age. From here it recedes.

What glaciers are blocking Cro-Magnon from leaving Africa to take over territory in Europe?

From Diamond, again.

Thus, the scene that the human world presented from around 130,000 years ago to sometime before 50,000 years ago was this: Northern Europe, Siberia, Australia, and the whole New World were still empty of people. In the rest of Europe and western Asia lived the Neanderthals; in Africa, people increasingly like us in anatomy; and in eastern Asia, people unlike either the Neanderthals or Africans but known from only a few bones. All three populations were still primitive in their tools, behavior, and limited innovativeness. The stage was set for the Great Leap Forward. Which among these three contemporary populations would take that leap?

The evidence for an abrupt change—at last!—is clearest in France and Spain, in the late Ice Age around 35,000 years ago. Where there had previously been Neanderthals, anatomically fully modern people (often known as Cro-Magnons, from the French site where their bones were first identified) now appear. Were one of those gentlemen or ladies to stroll down the Champs Elysées in modern attire, he or she would not stand out from the Parisian crowds in any way. Cro-Magnons’ tools are as dramatic as their skeletons; they are far more diverse in form and obvious in function than any in the earlier archeological record. They suggest that modern anatomy had at last been joined by modern innovative behavior.

http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/6904/7070246/SOC250_Ch01.pdf

The "Great Leap Forward was Cro-Magnon leaving Africa. And achieving total domination very quickly.

And the language capacity is not changing.

No difference in groups across the entire planet is proof.

 

[fromderinside]

If one takes into account severe winters and the fact that glaciation esssentially removes the area from any kind of primate existence one still retains the argument that climate hostility retarded significcant cromagnon European flow until after 75000 bce. 25 k is plenty of time to interbreed and eliminate species which are now less well adapted to changing environment without hypothesizing sudden language acquisition.

Of course some got thorough before 70k years bme which explains the limited evidence found that cromagnon arrived in Europe.

Much simpler hypothesis and rationalization than sudden genetic mutation which, as I explained earlier, is more readily explained by rapid climate variations over the glacial period driving fitness toward robust climate variation survival. Existing theory suggests more gradual change from to analysis brain from vision brain over period from four million years bme in agreement with genetic marker analyses.

As for fixed language, changes in dyslexia and cultural accommodation signaled by tripling of autism rates in western world - true even if one takes into account tendencies to include more as so designated over the past 8 decades - put lie to that position. (for example,incrfeased incidence: Denmark https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-014-2053-6 ; Brazil need to translate from Portuguese biochemical basis conclusion: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0034-72802016000500412&script=sci_arttext)

 

[untermensche]

If one takes into account severe winters and the fact that glaciation esssentially removes the area from any kind of primate existence one still retains the argument that climate hostility retarded significcant cromagnon European flow until after 75000 bce. 25 k is plenty of time to interbreed and eliminate species which are now less well adapted to changing environment without hypothesizing sudden language acquisition.

We're talking about areas in Europe and eastern Asia where Neanderthal are living primitively without encroachment.

Places where Cro-Magnons (humans) could have survived if they could have eliminated the Neanderthals.

But Cro-Magnons did not encroach for tens of thousands of years.

Nothing stopped them except their primitive tools and behaviors, which suddenly changed.

Then within about 7,500 years humans ruled all of Europe.

Much simpler hypothesis and rationalization than sudden genetic mutation which, as I explained earlier, is more readily explained by rapid climate variations over the glacial period driving fitness toward robust climate variation survival. Existing theory suggests more gradual change from to analysis brain from vision brain over period from four million years bme in agreement with genetic marker analyses.

Simpler? Than a single mutation within a very complex system that already has codes for specialized subsystems? You joke?

Humans don't need to wait for temperature drops. They make coats.

Brain size changes via punctuated equilibrium, not gradually.



Large jumps. Big jump from habilis to erectus.

Big jump from ercetus to Neanderthal and us.

The first study is about the rates of autism spectrum disorder. The second study again is just describing what possible harms could befall the rare individual, nothing about the language capacity changing over time.

The language capacity relies on attention and memory and for most hearing and vision.

If any of these other "systems" are not functioning properly the language capacity may have difficulty. But it is not a change to the language capacity anymore than the rare individual born with abnormal neuro-muscular function changes the walking capacity over time.

 

[fromderinside]

Convenient graphic. Move this a little, that a little, ignore what's out of order and wallah, a graph confirming a theory. Wow. How creative. Just a few adjustments. Evidence actually shows within margins between first hominid and chimplike, then flat again from africanus to habilis then flat again from habilis to erectus then flat again until proto-sapien.

Strange thing on the way to the theory is Neadnerthalis larger brain than sapien sapien. (see studies I've already cited). Also time periods are a bit longer than graph you provide. So adjust to 3.6 for Aust. africanus to 2.5 - 2.1 for H. habilis to 1.1 to 0.9 for H. erectus, then to about (0.2 for neanderthal (unknown progenitor probably related to H. heidelbergus) then to H. sapien sapien probably at 0.15 - 0.12

Now relate them to environmental change rates and wallah an entirely different explanation appears. One appears that's much more aligned with environment and artifact and cultural evidence. My my. No need to hew to communist presumptions, blank slates or anything like that. Down goes Chomsky and Gould and up comes Wilson, Pinker, Dawkins and Dennett etc. If we clear out those with political prejudice we wind up with nobody versus Wilson and Dennett and Williams.

My preference is the last sentence and following physics and it's linkage to biochemistry. Hell, I've still got attachments to Margaret Mead ferchrssake mainly because she was top reference during sixties on primitive tribes and cultures. Not that I take her stuff to the bank, I don't. I do take her penchant for observation guiding one to conclusions rather than doing so using belief as the anchor. Thor Heyerdahl to you.

 

[untermensche]

Believe it or not I did not create that graphic.

But erectus is almost twice habilis.

With Neanderthal and us about twice erectus.

Not gradual change.

Punctuation.

 

[lpetrich]

Yes,  Punctuated equilibrium, the hypothesis that species originate in small offshoot populations of earlier species, then last without much fossilizable change for the rest of their existence. I say "fossilizable", because molecular genetic drift is more-or-less continuous.

The article mentions "saltationism", the extreme form of Punc-Eq where evolution comes in one-generation big jumps. "Although there exist some debate over how long the punctuations last, supporters of punctuated equilibrium generally place the figure between 50,000 and 100,000 years." Meaning lots of generations. Furthermore, Punc-Eq advocates maintain that there is usually not much difference between a species and its descendant species.

So that's why I call the Chonsky/untermensche view of human-language evolution quasi-creationist. It involves a burst of evolution that does everything at once. But from what is known of evolution, it does not develop multiple features all at once. Consider the evolution of birds. Their closest relatives are crocodilians, and those animals don't look very birdlike. The evolution of birds involved several steps that happened at different times:

Bipedal (two-legged) walking. Ancestral dinosaurs did this, though many of their descendants reverted to quadrupedal (four-legged) walking, sometimes giving away their ancestral gaits with outsized hind legs.

Feathers.

Theropods' reduction of digits: hindlimbs to 4, forelimbs to 4 then 3. Feet became birdlike, to the point that some (non-avian) dinosaur footprints were first identified as the footprints of giant birds.

Archaeopteryx is famous for its feathers, but it has several ancestral features, like teeth and a long tail. It also does not have a large breastbone.

Flight: likely gliding, then powered. A large breastbone developed as an attachment point for the limb muscles that do the downstroke of powered flight, the part that moves the bird.

Replacement of teeth with a beak. Some fossils are known of birds with both teeth and beaks.

Shortening of the tail. Most of the extent of present-day birds' tails is the tail feathers.

 

[lpetrich]

So the distinctive features of birds did not develop all at once. The Chomsky/untermensche view of the evolution of human language is that it is like birds' distinctive features evolving all at once: bipedal walking, 4-digit feet, forelimbs with 3 digits and used as wings, short tails, feathers, lack of teeth, and beaks. Distinctive relative to present-day reptiles, which mostly do quadrupedal walking when they have limbs, which often have teeth, long tails, etc.

But there are many fossils that fill the gap between birds and reptiles, fossils that show features emerging separately rather than all at once.

So it likely was with human language, and that's why I like the singing hypothesis. It states that making sequences of sounds evolved before making them convey meaning. It doesn't require all of these features to emerge at one time, as the Chomsky/untermensche hypothesis requires.

 

[untermensche]

...The Chomsky/untermensche view of the evolution of human language is that it is like birds' distinctive features evolving all at once..

Absolute nonsense.

The theory is that a tiny change, a single mutation altered an already existing complex system, the brain, somehow enabling the language capacity.

Nobody thinks a single mutation can create a complex system, like a feather. But a single mutation could alter the design of a feather.

You are beating a Strawman to death.

 

[Bomb#20]

Anywhere is ambiguous. It is meant as a specific region of the world.

But better, randomly pick a thousand people that share a genetic profile which shows ancestry to one geographical region, and then pick another.

It's been done of course. Done with tribes found isolated deep in jungles. Done with people isolated on islands.

Human language has not been here that long.

No group differences.

The human ability to acquire language appears to not have changed since it first appeared.

Which is not to say it can't change, but it would have to change in an individual and then offspring of that individual would eventually have to be the only remaining humans.

But H. sapiens sapiens' "most recent common ancestor" is estimated to be much more recent than your "Some 100 to 200 thousand years ago." estimate for when our ancestors first got the ability to acquire a language. Some models put the MRCA at as recent as 3000 years ago. We could have initially evolved language acquisition 100,000 years ago, and subsequently evolved a series of several improvements, each of which would have gradually outcompeted the previous version and spread to the entire human population. There's enough room in the timeline for that to have happened multiple times between the "great leap forward" and the time when the descendants of somebody who had our current standard set of language genes became the only remaining humans. Remember, a MRCA 3000 years ago doesn't mean the descendants of everybody else alive 3000 years ago died out; it means they all interbred with descendants of somebody who had a hell of a lot of descendants. Moreover, the "great leap forward" is said to have been around 50,000 years ago; so the same reasoning applies to the period after language acquisition arose but before the "great leap forward". In fact, why shouldn't we suppose that the "great leap forward" was itself caused by some innovation in the genes for language acquisition, some major evolutionary improvement in a language acquisition ability that was already 50,000 years old at that point?

One point concerning the evolution of human speech deserves
more emphasis—its antiquity. The Lieberman and Crelin
(1971) Neanderthal study is often cited to support claims that
speech evolved abruptly at a recent date. Boe et al. (Boe,
Maeda, and Heims 1999; Boe et al. 2002) claim that we concluded
that Neanderthals were a “speechless species.” However,
this was not our conclusion. What we wrote was that
Neanderthals represent “an intermediate stage in the evolution
of language. This indicates that the evolution of language
was gradual, that it was not an abrupt phenomenon. The
reason that human linguistic ability appears to be so distinct
and unique is that the intermediate stages in its evolution are
represented by extinct species” (Lieberman and Crelin 1971,
221). Some form of speech must have been in place in the
archaic hominids ancestral to both humans and Neanderthals.
There would have been no selective advantage for retention
of the mutations that yielded the species-specific human
supralaryngeal vocal tract at the cost of increased morbidity
from choking unless speech was already present. The question
is when.​

(Source)

 

[untermensche]

...But H. sapiens sapiens' "most recent common ancestor" is estimated to be much more recent than your "Some 100 to 200 thousand years ago." estimate for when our ancestors first got the ability to acquire a language...

Early hominins—particularly the australopithecines, whose brains and anatomy are in many ways more similar to ancestral non-human apes—are less often referred to as "human" than hominins of the genus Homo.[5] Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia, and gave rise to anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Africa about 200,000 years ago.[6][7] They began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. In several waves of migration, anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa and populated most of the world.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

This evidence of "behavioral modernity" is the "Great Leap Forward" Diamond spoke of.

For Chomsky and others it is what signifies the emergence of human language.

It is doubtful that Neanderthal or pre-humans were silent and unable to make sounds. They probably even had crude communication or signaling with sound. Like baboons.

But there is no evidence they had language.

Crude signalling with sound does not become a hierarchically structured intricate innate "grammar" below the level of consciousness in slow steps.

 

[Bomb#20]

Early hominins—particularly the australopithecines, whose brains and anatomy are in many ways more similar to ancestral non-human apes—are less often referred to as "human" than hominins of the genus Homo.[5] Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia, and gave rise to anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Africa about 200,000 years ago.[6][7] They began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. In several waves of migration, anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa and populated most of the world.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

This evidence of "behavioral modernity" is the "Great Leap Forward" Diamond spoke of.

For Chomsky and others it is what signifies the emergence of human language.

It is doubtful that Neanderthal or pre-humans were silent and unable to make sounds. They probably even had crude communication or signaling with sound. Like baboons.

But there is no evidence they had language.

Crude signalling with sound does not become a hierarchically structured intricate innate "grammar" below the level of consciousness in slow steps.

Wait a minute. A week ago you said this:

There are no group differences in language acquisition.

A person with even a little knowledge of evolution should be able to understand what that means.

The ability to acquire a language has not changed since humans first acquired the ability.

Some 100 to 200 thousand years ago.

When are you claiming human language arose? Was it 50,000 years ago or was it 100 to 200 thousand years ago?

In any event, you appear to be proposing that our ancestors went from "crude communication or signaling with sound. Like baboons" to "the emergence of human language" in one fell swoop. Why? Why shouldn't we suppose that H. habilis had communication skills more language-like than australopithecines, and that H. erectus's were more advanced than H. habilis's, and that archaic H. sapiens's were more advanced yet although still more primitive than ours? Everything else in human evolution followed that pattern. And Lieberman points out that Neanderthals appear to share some of our anatomical changes from H. erectus that don't make evolutionary sense unless our common ancestor, archaic H. sapiens, already had speech a good deal more advanced than baboons.

 

[untermensche]

When are you claiming human language arose? Was it 50,000 years ago or was it 100 to 200 thousand years ago?

Hard to know when the language capacity arose. About 200,000 is the outside range, and about 50,000 is the inside range.

About 200,000 years ago is when humans first arrived. So if the language capacity arose when humans arose that would be the outside range.

If humans arose first and the language capacity is something that arose in one individual who could pass the capacity to offspring and the capacity presented such a survival advantage that those without it were eventually either killed by those with it or lost in some struggle for survival that those with it were able to surmount, then the date the language capacity arrived is estimated, by some, to be about 50,000 to 100,000.

One reason language is believed to have arisen in one event is because of the infinite nature of language. It is a computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions.

No person can understand every expression, but every person with the language capacity has the ability to understand infinite expressions.

A computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions does not arise step by step.

You don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000 ......and so on to infinite.

Non-human animals use sounds and if possible facial expressions and body language for communication.

They do not have language. They have communication.

Humans have communication with body language and facial expression and some sounds, but humans have language too.

And language can be used for thinking or for communication, or to deliberately mislead.

But communication and language are not the same thing.

...And Lieberman points out that Neanderthals appear to share some of our anatomical changes...

What's missing are the cultural changes, the advancements in tools and other signs of increasing innovativeness that are speculated to arise because of the language capacity.