Language May Have Evolved Earlier Than Supposed

Science News reports on research suggesting that humans' language ability may have developed earlier than we thought. Scientists used CT scanning of H. heidelbergensis skulls, more than 530,000 years old, to reconstruct the structure of the ear canal of this Neanderthal ancestor. They found evidence that the ears of these early hominids would have had a sensitivity peak in the same 2-4 KHz range that the ears of modern humans do — the range in which most information is carried in language. Sensory systems are neurologically expensive, and it's unlikely that the body would invest the resources in maintaining such a system if it didn't serve a purpose. Quoting: "It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neanderthals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication. The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over a longer period of time..."

Comments

Language

[Anonymous Coward]

So easy a caveman could do it.

Re:Language

[SEWilco]

Ugh.

Re:Language

[BizzyM]

How could language develop BEFORE Adam and Eve, scientists? Explain THAT!

Re:Language

[vyruss000]

.ogg !

Re:Language

[Hal_Porter]

That reminds of a great story in a book somewhere "Ugh, son of Ugh ...". And then it goes with all the nouns and verbs replaced with Ugh.

Re:Language

[bronney]

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.

--Jack Handey

More than one conclusion.

[rhun32]

Another explanation is that our speech developed to use the frequencies they use because that's what our ears responded to best.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[zappepcs]

I'm with you on that. Evolution has more than one input or constraint. Even in the non-speaking animal world, communication occurs regularly. I find it difficult to surmise that because there is no record, it probably didn't happen. The development of many varied languages does not wholly support a sudden explosion of language, but a long history of developing communication methods. If it had started and caught on like some meme, it would look more or less alike all over the world despite local variations. It just doesn't seem to make sense that language could have arrived any other way than slowly with local variations vastly different from one another.. such as we see in the many languages spoken on the planet now. We see this even in the written word.

When the world was much larger (so to speak) assimilation of other cultures did not happen often or on the scales we see now, creating pockets of population that developed on their own-ish. This causes different needs for communication, and eventually different languages.

From http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp

By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts.

In one short sentence, if the ability to speak/hear is innate in the human brain, then to say language only began abruptly 50,000 years ago is to say that the modern human brain really only developed abruptly 50,000 years ago. Forget the 10,000 year barrier some believe. Evolution is capable of many things, but I believe that the modern human brain was basically intact as we know it today before 50,000 years ago.

The paper at ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.donald.html also suggests that it's possible that what we think we know may not be true as there seems no direct evidence to support explosive changes in hominids at that 45,000-50,000 point, only fossil evidence of physical changes. It's a good guess, but still a guess. Communication happened from day one, when spoken language we might recognize as such began is nothing but a guess without some evidence of the actual brain structure or perhaps a nice wall painting of someone giving a speech?

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mr_matticus]

That does not explain why the human vocal apparatus matches the peak sensitivity of the ears. The two likely evolved together, as a function of use for speech.

Your theory does not explain why the human ear responds to the 2-4kHz range best. It is true that human speech was essentially predetermined to occur in the 1-10kHz range as a function of that being the most common hearing range for animals (which naturally would be somewhat uniform, so that we can all hear each other), but the human peak sensitivity is relatively low in our overall hearing range (about 10-15% along the line, linearly).

On the other side, the vocal apparatus of humans is too large to be efficient at significantly higher frequencies (and a smaller system would pose other problems in terms of articulation), and simultaneously our throats are too small to have a much lower peak efficiency range. As a result, spoken communication and our ability to produce sound clearly informed the evolution of our ears.

Communication is, therefore, the reason our peak sensitivity is what it is.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[spectral]

So wait, because what emits noise is a certain way, and of certain dimensions, the things that pick up the noise had to change to accommodate? It works both ways. If our peak hearing range was tuned to listen to, say, the sound of a baby crying (note this is before puberty would have changed the frequency range common for use in adult communication), or the sound of one of our most common predators, or something similar, I imagine that spoken language communication would have adjusted itself to the hearing range rather than the other way around. Something that is variable amongst many humans seems most likely to be something that evolution would play with. I can't change what frequencies I'm listening for, but I can easily change what frequencies I'm emitting, and imagine that over time evolution would favor those that didn't have to do as many changes to effectively communicate in the most sensitive range, as opposed to people wildly/randomly communicating at a certain frequency range and then evolution getting better at understanding it.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mr_matticus]

So wait, because what emits noise is a certain way, and of certain dimensions, the things that pick up the noise had to change to accommodate? It works both ways.

You're not listening.

The peak hearing range is attuned to the human vocal range. They are a coupled pair. It is not a case of speech being optimized to our hearing, because the speech organs have much more confining physical limitations than hearing organs. Of note here is that the peak sensitivity of women is higher than that of men--and the vocal organ's peak performance is higher as well. We are not physically capable of producing speech in a significantly different range--our vocal apparatus could not evolve to match a peak hearing sensitivity in a different range.

The ear evolved to optimize to the human vocal range's specific limitations. All speech had to do was get inside the 1-10kHz "normal" mammalian range--the human ear can hear well below and above this range, but the vocal apparatus cannot function there.

I imagine that spoken language communication would have adjusted itself to the hearing range rather than the other way around.

No. The human vocal apparatus has significantly narrower physical limits than the human ear. It cannot respond as effectively.

Something that is variable amongst many humans seems most likely to be something that evolution would play with.

That's just it: it's not that variable. What your brain interprets as great variations in frequency are, in fact, relatively minor. Further, your ability to produce sounds outside the midrange of your vocal tract grows exponentially more difficult. Your ability to hear those sounds requires no similar exertion.

wildly/randomly communicating at a certain frequency range

It's neither wild nor random. It is a direct, physical consequence of the structure and size of the vocal organs. It's not coincidental that a kitten makes high pitched, squeaky noises and a lion has a low, reverberant roar.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

Even in the non-speaking animal world, communication occurs regularly.

I humbly request from the /. community a good definition of "speaking". My dog responds quite well when I speak commands and has a variety of barks/howls/whimpers. My 3-year old, although not speaking proper English, communicates just fine to levels that I'm only beginning to appreciate. My 1-year old only knows ~3 words, but several hand signs and multiple grunts/cries/etc. The cats that live in my house respond when their names are called and know to run when I holler at them - They also hiss when distressed or purr when pleased - I understand their meaning.

Where's the line? In order to communicate well enough for history to record it do you need a documented language? That seems unfair.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[A nonymous Coward]

There are a zillion holes in TFA. I wonder if it actually summarizes the science accurately?

For instance, it assumes that if the ancestor could hear the same range as us, it could develop language, with the implication that if the ancestor couldn't hear the same range as us, it couldn't develop language.

Criminy, language doesn't depend on the frequency range! It may depend on bandwith to some extent, or beingable to differentiate the sounds from natural inanimate sounds.

And like you say, it would be pretty danged weird if the ears and voices worked with different frequencies. That's the kind of mistake an intelligent designer could make with a hangover after celebrating the design of a new version of, say, whale. But evolution wouldn't make that mistake.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Temposs]

Speaking is all of those things, in some sense. That is, vocal utterances with the intent(or side effect, even) to transmit information or state.

Some people may, however, mean it in the sense that restricts speech to such vocal utterances that achieve a human level of communicative effectiveness.

Our physical apparatus for speaking is also more complicated than most other animals, which some people may use as a delineation for speech.

Maybe you are not so much looking for a defition of "speaking" as much as what separates human language from other animal language. Some suggest it is the use of recursion, which allows for communication of a fine level of detail and abstraction. The abstraction thing is important too, being able to describe what does not exist or what is not right in front of us or what is not physical.

The reason it's important to find when human language evolved to more or less its current state is that it would be interesting to know why we have this most powerful tool that all other living things lack and has allowed us to for most purposes nearly conquer the planet.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Methinks language implies symbols. Your cat hisses, which is an auditory signal. No doubt. But is there information encoded symbolically? What are the symbols, and what are the patterns used to build up references to said symbols (consonants, vowels, etc...)?

Re:More than one conclusion.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I'd suggest that language developed, and we adapted over time to better use language. Note that the physical adaptation would be to something that gave an advantage. (If I were talking, making plans, and you hear better than most, then (Feringi-like) you can make use of that. Likewise, hearing stress and determining if someone is lying when their vocal cords constrict is an advantage.)

The key point is that without language, there is no obvious reason to adapt to better use language. There can be no selection until there is some advantage to be gained.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

Maybe you are not so much looking for a defition of "speaking" as much as what separates human language from other animal language.

You may be right. I'll let my definition of "speaking" stand, as I feel it's interesting and would love a good discussion on that point.

But, at the risk of trolling, what's the difference between human from animal language? I see no clear line. I've potty trained both humans and rats - I submit to you that they're both intelligent, just at different levels.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

Your cat hisses, which is an auditory signal. No doubt. But is there information encoded symbolically?

Yes.

By hissing, my cat tells me symbolically that she's either scared, pissed, or both.

Of course, I keep trying to convince my wife that hissing means that she'd like to move out. That discussion typically doesn't end well...

Re:More than one conclusion.

[TapeCutter]

"In order to communicate well enough for history to record it do you need a documented language?"

Good question. David Attenborough belives that humans communicated stories through song and dance long before they learnt to speak and paint. The aboriginal cave paintings he talks about in the link have not changed their design in 30,000yrs. The natives he talked to were still painting the same designs on bark. The paintings themselves are cues for story telling, when Attenbourough asked what the paintings were about he wasn't told much. He found that you have to put the painting, dancing and singing alltogether, to understand the story from the painting alone is like reading slashdot just for the articles.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[zippthorne]

For many people it is difficult to grasp how a series of random events can lead to a result that seems engineered.

Indeed. People just like you , Mr. (or Ms.) AC. GP had a very clear and plausible explanation which, even if incorrect, would not be incorrect for any of the reasons you specified.

It's not a coincidence. All those chance mutations add up to fit the constraints. Knowing which constraints are the most rigid is most certainly important for postulating what drives what.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[RancidPeanutOil]

That was an excellent post overall, and the last part is a concise argument against many of the anti-evolutionary linguists - or rather, the linguists who see no need to extrapolate the processes of language from the laws of natural selection.

The first part (language differences) is not necessarily true for your reasons - language change occurs super-rapidly, with even weird auto-segmental stuff like tones creeping into a sister language with separations of ~100 years due to how everything is all bunched-up inside the vocal tract.

Whatever I've claimed in the past on slashdot (nuclear phycisist, clown, organic chemist, girl's volleyball coach), I'm actually a linguist, and in my linguistic way, I don't trust A> Anthropologists or B) especially Paleoanthropologists. I think, without reading the study, that what they're trying to imply is not that speech suddenly ocurred, but that some of the variants we use today to distinguish phonemes were understandable by neanderthals, especially things like vowels. These types of sounds, in many of their modern variations, require often three overtones of the initial sound - without this third overtone (and the corresponding length of the hairs in the ears and the depth of the speaker's throat), we would notice no difference, for example, between an englishman saying "park" and an american saying it, when of course, for modern speakers, the difference in the vocalic "r" almost defines the behavior of the accents. So they seem to kind of imply that these early hominids were capable of the same inventory of phoneme recognition that we are. In agreement with your point - just because they lacked some inventory prior is only to say they could have used some other segments, suchs as gestures, to convey the same linguistic data as we convey today chiefly through sound (don't let the "tongue" in "linguistics" fool you). But for various other reasons, even if everything was exactly the same, there's no guarantee that we were speaking, if other brain-interior functions weren't also in place. It takes an anthropologist to extrapolate language from bones, whereas any linguist would happily claim agnosticism, and with excellent reason. I'm very thankful for anthropological research, but that was a classic anthropology headline. Those anthropology guys - man.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Woldry]

But evolution wouldn't make that mistake.

Sure it would. Over and over, even. Mutations are random, and such a mutation as making ears and voices work with different frequencies is probably well within the range of random variation.

What evolution wouldn't do is favor that mistake and perpetuate it. (Of course, if this is what you meant in the first place, then we have no disagreement.)

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Woldry]

There can be no selection until there is some advantage to be gained.

Not necessarily true. A random mutation that does not harm an individual's reproductive success will persist and spread. Should the part of the population to whom it has spread be (by some other random chance) the part of the population that happens to survive, then that mutation is selected even without conferring any advantage.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Rippenspreizer]

Ok, speech may have developed thus far because these frequencies were available. But a sophisticated ear apparatus does not appear instantaneous, it takes ages. And there must be a reason for it (an advantage, actually). In terms of evolution, things have to go hand in hand.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[TheLink]

I'm sure there are many other contraints to the peak hearing range.

Such as being to hear other animals/things before "Something Bad Happens".

In the old days there weren't that many humans around, so it can't be just about hearing humans ;).

That said maybe even back then humans (and not other predators) were the greatest (audible) threat to humans.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Rippenspreizer]

I think it's all about abstraction. Our language is highly abstract, so we can express complex thoughts by putting different words together and use a syntax. Such a sentence cannot be devided without losing it's meaning. Most life forms DO communicate, even bacteria do. But usually one sound/gesture/smell/etc has one meaning. Of course, the transition is smooth, as is evolution. So there won't be any exact definition.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[bazorg]

The cats that live in my house respond when their names are called

... and do they meow to communicate amongst themselves or do they leave vocal noises for when they want to attract human attention?

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Narpak]

When thinking about the history of humanity, the development of civilization and the evolution of man; there are still old dogmas influencing our thinking. When I studied history at University I remember a lecture where our professor talked about dogmas. And how historians throughout time had been shaped by their society; interpreting finds to suit their world view. One concept is the idea that the reason we find no, or little, evidence of any organised society before the Egyptians; is simple that there were none; that there people living then were too primitive.

This of course is a dogma that has lost much credence today. We simply know that 5000-1000 years is too short a time for there to have been much change in the way our brain is structured. But still, it is easy to imagine our early ancestors as savage or stupid. Even if you have to push back the line between us and "them" further as archaeological evidence emerges.

It is my personal believe that the lack of evidence when it comes to anything older than say 10.000 years; is not evidence of anything. It doesn't prove that there were no organized society, or a advance language. And it doesn't prove that there was. We know that finding many, or good, fossils is hard. And we know that the Earth erodes pretty much anything given enough time.

So when people think about history they should always make sure that their thinking is reflected and objective; and not influenced by personal beliefs.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[wanax]

Hey guys.. Our ears suck at 2khz bands (mostly on location). No evolution in it. The more important aspect (motor) was the major constraint. Language is late and hasn't had time to have a major impact on evolution of hearing. See Cunningham and colleagues.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Schadrach]

I've been around cats basically my whole life (I had one die at 17 years old last year, her heart finally gave out). There is clearly some semi-complex communication that cats are capable of.

To put it simply, she could walk into the room, meow at me, and based upon tone, type, and cadence of the meow, you could determine exactly what she wanted. Literally, an "I would like to go out" meow sounded different than a "change position so I can sit on your lap" meow, is different than a "my box needs changed" meow is different than a "my food dish is empty" meow is different than an "I've gotten stuck somewhere, get me out" meow is different than etc, etc, etc.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mfnickster]

> Yeah but the language your cat speaks is not Turing-complete.

Are you sure? My cat seems to have run into some kind of halting problem.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[jrminter]

So when people think about history they should always make sure that their thinking is reflected and objective; and not influenced by personal beliefs.

Nice sentiment, but impossible for humans. There is no such thing as a 'bare fact.' Our observations (data) are always interpreted in terms of our previous experiences and beliefs. The best one can hope for is that one acknowledges and scrutinizes these. A wise person once observed that 'tradition is a bigger problem for those who do not admit they have them than for those who do.'

Re:More than one conclusion.

[TriggerFin]

...And the sounds made by humans before whatever you choose to define as speech would be in the most... comfortable vocal range, causing, again, hearing to develop before speech.

We were not running around shooting our mouths off about the weather and where we were going go to get a bite to eat before we could hear what we were saying.

But then, most animals have far more complex languages than we generally give them credit for; we just aren't able to hear all the differences in the calls they make. Many species have distinct (to them) calls for recognized individuals of other species, so a groundhog can communicate the difference between "the kid that throws food on the ground" and "the guy that shot at us the other day."

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

The cats that live in my house respond when their names are called

... and do they meow to communicate amongst themselves or do they leave vocal noises for when they want to attract human attention?

Sometimes - There's a high pitched chirping/meow they use to indicate that they're tracking something and the others come to help/compete.

Mostly, though, they communicate through hissing (profanity?) and simulated violence (threats?). That's cats for you. I'd rather stick to dogs and rats. Much better pets.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mazarin5]

It's my understanding that cats are adept at mimicry, and will learn to vocalize what they think their environment sounds like. Specifically, a cat that learns early to hunt birds will make chirping noises, and cats that learn to hunt rodents will make little squeaks. Cats that meow loudly at intervals most likely grew up in a place with humans, and are mimicking them.

I have two cats, one who meows constantly to me, and one that rarely meows at all. The first will only meow at the other cat if she's caught by surprise, but the second only meows to the first cat and not myself.

It's my experience in general that cats will meow to each other to gain attention, whether it's a kitten mewling for its mother, or a male cat "singing" to a potential mate. It seems like they have a strange method of basic communication that focuses on facial expressions; licking their noses to share information on food, or increasingly long blinks to express reassurance.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[benthurston27]

Or that they just had this kind of ear so they could hear each other grunting.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[cailith1970]

One of the biggest differences (that we're aware of) is signalling vs generative language. Human language builds on itself to expand itself in ways that we can understand new words based on their parts. For example, if I say the word "bullshitism" you kind of know what I'm talking about, even though I might have just made up the word now. We don't need to agree up front on this new word. The language is therefore generalisable.

Animal language is made up of signals, that is, a set of sounds that each have a meaning. The language can't expand past the number of possible signals * permutations.

Of course maybe animals DO have a complex grammar and generative language, but observation doesn't seem to bear this out.

(Note I read most of this in a postgrad research project years ago and can't remember half of it anymore).

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Nikker]

I guess does drawing a line really just mean we can chose what side we are on?

Re:More than one conclusion.

[gnick]

One of the biggest differences (that we're aware of) is signalling vs generative language. Human language builds on itself to expand itself in ways that we can understand new words based on their parts. For example, if I say the word "bullshitism" you kind of know what I'm talking about, even though I might have just made up the word now. We don't need to agree up front on this new word. The language is therefore generalisable.

I've never opened my eyes real wide, stared you down, dilated my pupils, and raised my fist in front of you before. But, if I did (I probably wouldn't - Despite looking a little intimidating, I'm a pretty laid back guy), you could probably interpret my message. No worries man, if we were having this conversation in a bar I'd buy you a drink right now - I just wanted something obvious and animalistic (my new word). It would have the same effect as if I'd said "I'm about to kick your ass" or if my cat had hissed and raised her paw with her claws out. If I (or my cat) had found a new way to relay that message, would it draw a line between instinctive behavior and genuine "communication".

I'm a little distraught over that line.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[cailith1970]

I've never opened my eyes real wide, stared you down, dilated my pupils, and raised my fist in front of you before. But, if I did (I probably wouldn't - Despite looking a little intimidating, I'm a pretty laid back guy), you could probably interpret my message.

Ahh, but you'd be doing the SAME thing or a close variation of it, that would always be interpreted the same way. It's not a generalisation. We'd also have a shared context. Try now to extend that to talking about being pissed off about something else, perhaps something abstract we can't see. It would wind up as charades.

No worries man, if we were having this conversation in a bar I'd buy you a drink right now

See, I can't even SEE a bar, but I know what you mean and I'd still take that drink ;) My point from above isn't necessarily about trying to convey abstract ideas, but rather extending one concept to discuss another related concept. Anyway, I can't remember enough of the literature to answer any more coherently.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[mr_matticus]

In the old days there weren't that many humans around, so it can't be just about hearing humans ;).

Hence the standardization of hearing potential across the 1-10kHz range--to hear other animals.

Peak sensitivity, on the other hand, is a direct consequence of needing to be able to filter out human sounds from the din of the forest/savannah. The general hearing range is designed to encompass the sounds of others--this is not peak sensitivity, however.

Take a look. What's special about that range? Human linguistic vocalization. What's the deviation in that range? Men have a statistically significant lower peak sensitivity (and a statistically significant lower vocalization range).

That said maybe even back then humans (and not other predators) were the greatest (audible) threat to humans.

That has been the case as long as homo sapiens has existed.

You, like other posters, clearly do not understand the concept of peak sensitivity. It is a selective enhancement within a much larger range of hearing--that is a coupled pair with the human vocalization range. There is absolutely no reason that can be explained by empirical evidence for hearing to have arbitrarily selected the 2-4kHz range; the only thing significant about that particular range is that that is where most human language sounds are expressed. It is not where any large predator makes sounds; it is not the range of footsteps or any other signaling sound.

Further, it would not make sense for the vocalization range to cover up other sounds in that range, e.g. of predators, especially since primitive warning sounds, like any other animal, are more important to pick up than local predators or other hazards. This is the sentry effect, exhibited in animals hundreds of thousands of years less evolved than ourselves. The hearing of most animals with similar social patterns is attuned with their vocalization range, so that they can best hear each other--and there is no evidence to suggest that the ear leads that process, and every sign pointing to the vocal tract motivating peak sensitivity.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[Downside]

Another explanation is that our speech developed to use the frequencies they use because that's what our ears responded to best.

Isn't that like postulating that giraffes might just happen to have long necks, and that's why they go looking for tall trees to eat? It is possible that our hearing specialisation occurred for some other purpose, but (as an admitted lay person) I haven't seen any reason to believe that humans have any auditory gifts denied the other mammals.

Re:More than one conclusion.

[GWBasic]

In one short sentence, if the ability to speak/hear is innate in the human brain, then to say language only began abruptly 50,000 years ago is to say that the modern human brain really only developed abruptly 50,000 years ago. Forget the 10,000 year barrier some believe. Evolution is capable of many things, but I believe that the modern human brain was basically intact as we know it today before 50,000 years ago.

I frankly think we'll find that a mutation, or a few mutations, in a few people benefitted society.

What if Einstien had a mutation? Many people benefit from GPS devices, which use Einstien's theories.

Likewise, what if it took a mutant to invent words that everyone else used?

Re:frosty piss?

[Anonymous Coward]

With that kind of evolutionary pressure, first posters may have evolved earlier than supposed.

Ofcourse!

[sadgoblin]

And the first episdoe of The First Doctor (Doctor Who) clearly showed them communicating! So that show must be true...

That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Anonymous Coward]

The earth has only existed for roughly 10,000 years.

Those aren't cave paintings...

[chill]

...they're pseudo-code block diagrams!

Actually, this makes sense with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. At one time in history, all programmers used and understood the one true language - LISP. Great things were accomplished, and man reached for programming godhood. However the Great Architect In The Sky took offense at the introduction of strings, vectors, arrays and streams and the creation of Common LISP and sought to punish the arrogant and make them understand proper syntax. He cursed their tongues and begat Fortran, Cobol, Algol and BASIC.

Today some strive for the light with Python and Ruby, while others walk the darkest of paths -- Visual Basic.

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[smittyoneeach]

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
--Mark Twain

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool! The one true language wasn't Lisp. It was assembly language (especially IBM S/360 assembly language)! The failure of programmers is the same failure of the Romans. Classical Latin was clean and pure. But the people were too weak to use it (crying about difficult noun declensions and verb conjugations) and created Latin vulgaris and other 'easy' languages (like Spanish and French). Everyone wanted their easy programming language instead of the correct programming language, which is why we have thousands of vulgar programming languages today.

But hark! Some wise men realized that there was a way to make an 'easy' programming language that was still almost as awesome as assembly language. And thus C was born. Wizened programmers realized the errors of their ways and swore to never use another language (other than assembly). Thus, the real wizards talk to themselves in assembly and then talk to their apprentices in C (until they are wise enough to understand why xor ax,ax is better than i=0;).

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[kurzweilfreak]

For even more fun...

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[negRo_slim]

i thought fortran was older than lisp...

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[A nonymous Coward]

Fool! The one true language wasn't Lisp. It was assembly language (especially IBM S/360 assembly language)!

Youngun, you'd best look behind you and realize the error of your ways. Machine code is where it's at. You take your assembler, with its labels and psuedo ops and formatting and passes of all things, and shuffle that card deck into oblivion before I come over the tubes at you and do it for your!

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Um...but Fortran came first, and was an attempt to code with great efficiency on slow hardware by modeling the language closely to the hardware. Lisp was the second language (although the first "high level" language as we mean high level today), and modeled not the hardware, but abstract mathematical structure. I would suggest the appropriate mythological metaphor to be, rather than the tower of babel, a mixture of the tower of babel and Prometheus. When man stayed low, the gods cared not. To move from assembly to Fortran was of little consequence. However, with the advent of Lisp, the gods realized that the patterns of reality itself (abstract math) were to be invoked, and the gods trembled, muttering "how long until they instantiate their own namespace", for we would be as powerful as they. So Satan first brought forth Cobol from the pits of Hell, and later gave us Basic and MS Windows. And here we are.

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[chill]

Heretic! :-)

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[chill]

Psalms 1337

And thus, in light of the error of his preachings, did the lowly coder conceive of the "preview" button. And the Great Architect did look down upon it and say "RTFM!"

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[AliasMarlowe]

...they're pseudo-code block diagrams!

Actually, this makes sense with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. At one time in history, all programmers used and understood the one true language - LISP.

Heretic! Blasphemer! The one true language is APL, in which expression of algorithms is terse and elegant.
Many cave paintings are quite passable APL.

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[CmdrGravy]

Machine code ? Liberal soft soap for those too lazy to build their chips to do the job properly in the first place.

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[aproposofwhat]

A real creator would program in...

Assembler!

A more subtle creator would program in...

Self-Assembler!

Guess which one is more likely :o)

Re:Those aren't cave paintings...

[A nonymous Coward]

Chips? Chips?!?

Punk, we didn't even have transistors.

If tubes were good enough for Mel, they were good enough for us.

This is on-topic

[smittyoneeach]

TFA only concerns spoken language.
Early mutant A/C humans may have indeed knapped flint knives
and employed them to off themselves in that cold morn,
if rejected by their shaggy, urine crystal encrusted
would-be girlfriends.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_M._Auel

Where do they come up with this stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we just travel back in time and ask the poor misunderstood neanderthals, like any decent chap would do? Instead we lobotimize some poor misshapen monkey brain and call their grandmothers ugly. Science these days, I tell ya.

Re:Where do they come up with this stuff?

[Von Helmet]

Better yet, just thaw one of those neanderthals out.

Cave caveman

[smittyoneeach]

But can he sell car insurance?

Re:Cave caveman

[mrsteveman1]

No but he can run lin....ah fuck it

Re:Cave caveman

[anilg]

And the answer everyone wants to know, Will he blend?

Not a vast surprise.

[jd]

The holes in the Neanderthal bone flute were carved (no internal fracturing or splintering, as you would expect from an animal bite) and regional variations in Neanderthal tools in Britain have suggested the possibility of regional culture at a very early date. These have long hinted at language being a much earlier development than believed. This adds a lot of weight to the argument, but it is the fact that there are an overwhelming number of pointers and indicators for language that should clinch it. Studies on hominids that far back is inherently speculative, which means those doing the studying have to carefully examine evidence with a skeptical eye. As a result, no one discovery will ever cause a radical shift in and of itself, but radical shifts - when they happen - will be all the more stunning.

Re:Not a vast surprise.

[aproposofwhat]

Tha's got ta be kidding, lad - t'differentiation of culture didn't 'appen 'til t'Great Schism when Lancashire became separated from God's Own Land, and t'Pennines were erected as a barrier.

I don't think it was all or nothing

[dreamchaser]

Language probably developed gradually over tens of thousands of years. The first words were probably danger warnings, then maybe things related to day to day survival such as words for various foodstuffs. I would not be surprised to find out that Homo Erectus had rudimentary language. Even today various animals have calls that correspond to danger signs, and primates such as chimps seem to be able to communicate fairly well without what we would call acutal language. Communication predates humanity, so it's only natural that apes with big brains (us) would take it to the next level and begin to transmit abstract information using vocalizations.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[jd]

That's much the way writing evolved (pictograms evolving into abstract representations, the representations then moving from physical objects to an abstract concept and finally to a sound that could double-up as that concept, which led to true writing as new concepts could then be composed from combining the archetypes together, and so on). The idea that language as a whole followed the same basic evolutionary path as writing is not that far-fetched. I'm actually rather surprised that the oldest known true writing (was Sumerian, the current record-holder is a form of ancient Chinese, dating 3,000 years ealier) is many hundreds of thousands of years newer than language, as things like art (eg: the flute, early necklace beads, etc) and symbolism (eg: the earliest known examples of abstract ritual) are hard to transmit between individuals by example alone. Writing is amazingly modern, in comparison to either cause or need.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[dreamchaser]

Yes, exactly. It seems we didn't need writing until we began commerce in early agrarian societies. The need for language probably coincided with the budding technology of our ancestors. Being able to explain how something was done and why was probably pretty important when teaching craftwork, be it firemaking or the chipping of stone into tools.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[porcupine8]

The recency of writing shouldn't be too surprising given the way we learn spoken (or signed) language vs writing. People learn spoken language, period. If a child is exposed enough to a language before puberty, the child will become fluent in it. Nobody has to teach them or explain it to them, and often attempts to do so don't result in acquiring it much faster than otherwise. Gorillas and chimps can learn a basic lexicon, but no amount of teaching gets them to anything resembling the grammatical fluency of an untaught three-year-old human.

Reading and writing, on the other hand, are things that millions of people over the world don't ever learn. Those that do have to be explicitly taught; very few pick up reading naturally from observing others and even fewer writing. For most children learning to read is a very challenging step.

When you compare those two processes, it becomes obvious that spoken language has had time to become very deeply ingrained in our circuitry, whereas reading and writing are not at all. They are things we are capable of, but they are not an integral part of being human.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[jd]

Factor in that people can (and do) invent their own written languages. I never mastered writing longhand notes at University (verbal and written information was different), so I developed my own written shorthand. I expect some cave paintings are likewise early human shorthand, teaching about hunting rather than being magical attempts for achieving hunting success. If that is correct, then crude proto-writing existed for a long time, but was never taken anywhere, and the consensus is that it is not writing.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[porcupine8]

As I said, very few pick up reading in that way. Not none, but very few. Your anecdata is one example. My own experiences are another. The vast majority of children (as shown by research with real statistically significant data) are counterexamples. They do pick up some understanding, of course, because they are exposed to it regularly (in literate cultures, of course), but not in nearly the way they pick up language. A good book on the subject is The Cradle of Culture: What Children Know About Writing and Numbers Before Being Taught, by Liliana Tolchinsky. (Btw, the "reading" you did by memorizing a story is very common. Learning the norms associated with reading, such as flipping pages and going left-to-right, is an important part of the process.)

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Alarindris]

My mom told me a story from when I was 3.

One of my parents would read to me before I went to bed each night.

One night, as my mom was reading to me, the phone rang and she said she'd be right back.

When she got back, to her surprise, I was reading where she left off.

I also do remember reading before I was in kindergarten, and when I was in kindergarten, my classmates were amazed that I could read.

(I should add my mom is also an elementary teacher, maybe had something to do with it.)

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

Not really, no. Language requires the ability to describe novel constructions, and once it is created, it expands at a tremendous pace because of that ability--language acquisition takes only a few years. Once you implement a framework, it's done. A slow evolution over even hundreds (let alone tens of thousands as you state) of years would require some element actively retarding the spread and constricting the operation of that language. Once you have a method of discourse, filling in the holes is fast and easy; simultaneously, if that method of discourse is fundamentally incomplete, then discourse isn't possible to begin with. Long-term language shift is more of a streamlining process (development and loss of case markers, formal grammatical context, complex and alternate syntax) rather than outright reconstruction.

In other words, the basic parts of speech come together at the same time. A language can't work with massive gaps. It is, in many ways, all or nothing. You can have sounds associated with objects and actions without having a language, but the transition to nouns and verbs requires a complete and immediate implementation of a grammar. Otherwise what you have is just a particularized form of communication, not a language.

It is that shift between communication and language that takes a long time, because it is dependent on the evolution of long-term socialization and culturalization. Languages evolve rapidly once they're formed, but they must be created with a relatively complete structure from day one in order to form at all.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Andyvan]

This is a point that became very clear to me when my mom contracted Alzheimer's. Towards the end, she couldn't figure out how to put her clothes on, but she could still speak (in two languages!).

Man is wired for vocal language.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Woldry]

Pedantic aside: The correct spelling is "vocal cords" (no h).

The difference is that relatively few humans learn to communicate in "pictorial languages". EVERY human, give or take a few with damaged or defective physiologies, learns spoken language. We're hard-wired for it. To me, that would indicate pretty clearly that spoken language evolved before "pictorial language".

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[dmcq]

I tend to believe that gestures were more of a precursor to speech than calls and warnings. Judging by the majority of gestures people used nowadays they were mostly used for social purposes rather than anything very informative. As ways of providing information though gestures are very effective, just think how easy it is to express something like that a particular plant tastes nasty.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Hognoxious]

A language can't work with massive gaps. It is, in many ways, all or nothing.

What about pidgins and creoles?

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[daisybelle]

My professional opinion as a linguist is that there's no clear evidence that language takes thousands of years to develop, and in fact, the evidence is, that in a modern human community, it takes 2-3 generations for basic hand and facial gestures to become a fully-fledged language with complex syntactic and morphological rules. I'm thinking here of the Nicaraguan deaf community, who were only allowed to become a community and use sign language in the mid-1970s wikipedia. The differences between the basic home signs used by the original community members (school students), and the language used by later members/students is very bloody impressive!

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

What about them? Both types have complete grammars.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Hognoxious]

You think they start out that way? An English merchant and a Chinese one meet in India and before negotiating the price of silk they thrash out the rules on verb conjugations?

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

An Englishman and a Chinese one meet in India and they speak to each other using a trade language or pidgin that already exists.

The first time two speakers encounter each other, they may find a common ground for communication, but they do not create a pidgin by doing so--that's impossible. A pidgin requires lengthy socialization and/or a common frame of linguistic reference--usually achieved by a superstrate.

Pointing and gesticulating, with rudimentary exchanges of words is not a pidgin. You can speak a pidgin just as you would any other language, and like any other language, it requires a functional grammar.

before negotiating the price of silk they thrash out the rules on verb conjugations?

Pidgins generally don't have verb conjugations, so no.

Negotiating the price of silk is also a gross oversimplification of the purpose and scope of a pidgin. You don't need to speak a language at all to negotiate a price.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Hognoxious]

So how do pidgins get created to start with?

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[smellsofbikes]

I read some about cave paintings/drawings because I do a lot of cave exploration and I'm just interested in cave stuff. Anyway, one of the things I find interesting about paintings is that some of the most commonly-appearing paintings were incredibly specific detail-wise, over unbelievably long periods of time. One sequence of paintings, where they'd draw (as I recall) a deer in brown, and over that draw a horse in tan, and over that draw a bison in black, occurs in that exact sequence, in those colors, in paintings across 20,000 years.
Twenty *thousand* years.
In written history, we haven't had anything remain even vaguely constant for even 1000 years. Latin came close.
Anyway. Point being: it might've been teaching rather than religious, but whatever it was, it was very tightly conserved, as were the technical details in how to use locally available resources to make the colors of paints needed, so whatever it was, it was very important to them.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

Pidgins are created when speakers of two languages each partially learn each other's language and use a simplified version to communicate. This usually occurs with a superstrate--both native language speakers will know a little bit of a third language--the superstrate, which allows them to communicate grammatically, while adopting terms from their native languages to substitute for the limited knowledge of the superstrate.

A pidgin cannot form without at least two preexisting languages. It is not a primitive precursor to a language, but an advanced intermediary between languages. Eventually, some pidgins begin to take on distinctive characteristics in a community that are not taken from any of the contributing languages, and they develop a population of native speakers, at which time it becomes a creole.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[GWBasic]

Language probably developed gradually over tens of thousands of years. The first words were probably danger warnings, then maybe things related to day to day survival such as words for various foodstuffs. I would not be surprised to find out that Homo Erectus had rudimentary language. Even today various animals have calls that correspond to danger signs, and primates such as chimps seem to be able to communicate fairly well without what we would call acutal language. Communication predates humanity, so it's only natural that apes with big brains (us) would take it to the next level and begin to transmit abstract information using vocalizations.

Last night I watched a documentary on the work "fuck." What's interesting about the word is that it communicates a primal, emotional meaning. One of the comedians joked that it was probably one of the first words uttered by primitive man.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[GWBasic]

Reading and writing, on the other hand, are things that millions of people over the world don't ever learn.

My mother taught me letters and plopped me in front of Seseme Street; I figured out the rest before I went to school.

My mom read many of the same books over and over to me. At some point, the words made sense and I was able to move to books that I hadn't heard before.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Hognoxious]

Since you're so smart, can you tell me what a rhetorical question is?

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

Reduced to a trolling child. How predictable.

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[Hognoxious]

And you pontificating like a pretentious twerp is the surprise of the century?

Re:I don't think it was all or nothing

[mr_matticus]

Just because you don't know what the hell you're talking about doesn't mean the rest of us are pontificating or pretentious.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Opportunist]

That's 5000, heretic! You're one of those science boys that want to make our Earth older than it is, ain't you?

First words

[Leuf]

Actually, early man first came very close to words trying to get early woman back to his cave. The first actual words however were spoken the next morning when man rolled over and saw what was lying next to him.

Re:First words

[magarity]

No, the first words were Mrs Caveman asking Mr Caveman why exactly was he so late coming back from the hunt.

Re:First words

[JustOK]

First grunt!

The birds and the bees and the prairie dogs

[querent23]

do it. check this out. It's semi-relevant and too cool. http://www.livescience.com/animals/prairie_dogs_041206.html

Re:The birds and the bees and the prairie dogs

[pushing-robot]

Very interesting indeed. I am constantly amazed by the cognitive abilities of wild animals, and how quickly they can adapt to new environments foreign to their "instinctive behavior patterns".

Our ability to selectively perceive the world is equally amazing. The brain's fundamental pattern-matching ability naturally defines new experiences within the context of previous ones, which is great if you're trying to recognize a dangerous situation but terrible for interpreting new data in an unbiased manner: When one believes that the sun revolves around the earth, that one social group is superior to another social group, or that other species are simple automata, even the most damning evidence to the contrary is subconsciously twisted, rationalized, and fit into one's pre-existing world view.

Speaking of the rationalizing mind, language works in a similar format: When we experience something, we link it to other former experiences. To pass the experience to another party, we describe it in terms of connections to simple experiences which we assume the other party shares, by means of adjectives and adverbs, analogies and metaphors. The sender converts their new experience into a list of simple mental connections, and the receiver assembles those connections to recreate the experience.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, we've noticed the same sorts of behavior in animals — we know that some species have rather complicated forms of communication, and they seem to be able to describe new experiences the same way we do, by referring to other, similar things. But that doesn't mean we speak a common language; just as you'd have trouble swapping pop culture references with members of a lost Brazilian tribe, most animals have had completely different experiences than you. Different species perceive the world differently, and since language is primarily a series of shared mental connections, it would probably be impossible to translate more than basic emotions.

Language May Devolve Earlier Than Supposed

[ActusReus]

Your typical MySpace/Facebook user has ears that can handle 2-4 KHz too. Doesn't necessarily correlate to speaking ability.

How about a scientific study on human speech since the dawn of Eternal September?

Re:Language May Devolve Earlier Than Supposed

[themushroom]

o rly? omg!

Jumping to conclusions

[Opportunist]

The ear of an early ancestor of modern human could hear well. So he has to speak. By that logic, dogs should have a far more complicated oral language than we do.

At best we could draw the conclusion that he would have understood words spoken by a modern day human. With understand meaning "being able to pick up the signal" not "interpret the signal correctly".

If his anatomy to produce speech is now also capable of creating articulate sounds that can be interpreted as speech, we can assume that he may have developed speech.

Anything remains a speculation, though. Chimps have hands and can grasp things, they have opposable thumbs and they have shown that they can use tools. That does not mean that because of those hands being able to create tools they would have done it. So far, I don't remember any evidence of chimps crafting anything resembling stone age tools. If you just look at their physology, though, they could be able to create them.

So jumping to the conclusion that what is possible must have happened is quite a stretch. Of course, we cannot determine whether such a human ancestor would have had speech. Maybe if we ever manage to create one from the leftovers we find now and then, we could try to find that out. Until then, I would not jump to the conclusion that what exists must also have been used the way we would use it today.

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[porcupine8]

I doubt that the scientists have actually jumped all the way to the conclusion that these humanoids had modern language. It sounds more like these are the earliest examples of the beginnings of evolution toward language, but still much older than those beginnings were thought to be.

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[Cairnarvon]

This isn't about hearing well, it's about hearing well in a particular range.
Dogs have good ears because they're hunters, and chimpanzees have opposable thumbs because it helps with climbing (though they have indeed been used for making and using tools as well). There doesn't seem to be any other real explanation for being able to hear this well in that specific range, and like the summary said, maintaining sensitive sensory systems is quite expensive (much more so than just having a thumb in a different spot), so it's very unlikely this would have happened for no reason at all.

It's not at all ``jumping to conclusions'' to formulate hypotheses on the matter.

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[0xdeadbeef]

Frankly, I find the idea of a hominid that speaks offensive!

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[Woldry]

General Ursus? Is that you?

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[TheNucleon]

Despite my faith, I know it's got to be older than that. So much human arrogance could not have evolved in so short a time.

Which came first?

[Anonymous Coward]

This conclusion relies on the assumption that humans developed sensitive hearing in a particular frequency range because this range was used for language. It seems just as likely to me, if not more likely, that as language developed it took advantage of the most sensitive range of human hearing. Sort of a chicken and egg problem, isn't it?

Bass Ackwards

[DynaSoar]

The fact that the human auditory system is "sensitive" in the 2K to 4K range is no indication of language in us or any hominid, present or past. The average human voice covers 2 octaves, not just this one, and the range of those two varies considerably, from around 350 Hz to 4.5K. It is far more likely that homonid hearing evolved to perceive the most salient sounds, those requiring fight-or-flight response or else used for hunting, thus increasing surivability. The vocal cords most likely evolved to produce sounds at the range the auditory system was already primed for.

Telephones reproduce speech between 400 Hz and 3.4K, because that's where the most information content in speech is. This is at odds with the 2K-to-4K claim in TFA. The portion of the auditory system examined in TFA is the resonant cavity responsible for filling in 'missing' information. Language as normally practiced does not require this. Survival oriented hearing, predating spoken language by several species, does.

I'll be somewhat impressed if they can show that chimps do not have the same auditory system tuning. Chimps do, after all, have greater left than right frontal cortex, in the same area as human language perception and production, and that wouldn't have evolved without a reason either.

Re:Bass Ackwards

[potpie]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I wonder if perhaps the influence of appealing to the media may have colored this article. "We found out the hearing range of early humans" doesn't sound quite as good without the possibility of altering previously held ideas about the past. Honestly, I think the best method we'll have for determining when language came about will be an expansive study of ancient artwork and tools, trying to find out if the information necessary to make them could have been transmitted without language. Of course it would have to be more complicated than that small summary, but I think there's hope.

Re:Bass Ackwards

[DynaSoar]

> I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I wonder if perhaps the influence of
> appealing to the media may have colored this article.

There's no doubt in my mind that's the case. See Alan Boyle's "Cosmic Log" of 7/12 on MSNBC.com for an extensive rant I wrote on just that subject.

> Honestly, I think the best method we'll have for determining when language
> came about will be an expansive study of ancient artwork and tools, trying
> to find out if the information necessary to make them could have been
> transmitted without language.

Examine your definition of language. Language generates spontaneously, even in the absence of auditory and vocal systems (children born deaf to hearing parents in isolated areas develop a sign language with the parents, even though the parents had no previous experience with sign). The first language was almost certainly sign language. The language needed for making and using tools was probably tool making and use, with gestural emphasis added. The brain's capability for "generative grammar", the major developmental milestone in language, probably evolved well before speech, which itself was at first likely just some more emphatic additions to the sign language. A grunt is just a grunt, but a grunt and gesture is communication. Even now 2/3 of our spoken language is nonvocal -- signs, signals, gestures, kinesics, proxemics and chronemics.

It's unlikely humans are the only species with generative grammar capability. I don't know of any brain imaging to support it (of Wernicke's area in this case, as opposed to Broca's which I referred to previously), but Penny Patterson's dissertation contains at least two instances of Koko compounding signs into a new sign phrase -- that's generative. And she used them repeatedly in sentences with a set order -- that's grammar. One of those phrases was essentially cussing (Mike + dirty + toilet + stink: "Mike is shit.") -- and that's language at its finest.

Re:frosty piss?

[sadgoblin]

I think they haven't evolved at all.

Negus

[wonkavader]

Negus wrote a long fairly boring analysis of the larynx which makes such statements painful. (Lots of cross-sagittal sections. Gross but cool.)

Not because they're wrong, but rather because they are just so OBVIOUS.

The position of the tongue in the back of the throat and the movement of the epiglottis upward, away from the larynx are not beneficial -- they're compromises to benefit something else -- a vast increase in phonemes. Language comes right behind (or even ahead of) the upright posture and the migration of the tongue down into the throat.

Furthermore, all this ignores gestural languages. Susan Goldin-Meadow's studies showed that deaf children across many languages and continents, when deprived of sign-language education (yes some families decide to do this), all come up with their own home-grown sign language with key syntactic elements (notably word order) which are exactly the same. Even when the language that their parents speak have different word orders. There's some hard-coded syntax for at least gestural language.

It's possible that gesture is just taking advantage of hard-coded speech language brain-systems. It's likewise possible that language predates speech, and that the migration of the tongue allowed the new upright primates to use their virtuoso noises with their already established language -- which would have been primarily gestural.

Language goes back a LONG, LONG way. It might have been crappy until half a million years ago, but it's way older than that.

Re:Negus

[houghi]

Susan Goldin-Meadow's studies showed that deaf children across many languages and continents, when deprived of sign-language education (yes some families decide to do this), all come up with their own home-grown sign language with key syntactic elements (notably word order) which are exactly the same. Even when the language that their parents speak have different word orders. There's some hard-coded syntax for at least gestural language.

That might be, but how much is the influence of the people who DO speak and hear and interact with these deaf children?
Because there is interaction with peoaple able to speak, it might still be not something hard-coded, but soft-coded.

Re:Negus

[lysse]

It's possible that gesture is just taking advantage of hard-coded speech language brain-systems.

That sentence made me think of something. I've recently been diagnosed AS-positive :) and one thing that seems to crop up with aspies is that their spoken language development is as advanced (but idiosyncratic) as their gestural language development (body language, etc) is inhibited. I wonder if there's a connection there? I know I'm (waaaay) reaching here, but I wonder if it was basically the AS trait which advanced human intelligence in the first place - conceiving of linguistic patterns to convey the information they couldn't share gesturally, and in the process kickstarting human social evolution?

Anyway, please ignore this thought if it's ridiculous :)

Re:Negus

[wonkavader]

Yes, the language of the parents could effect the language of the children. That's why the study was done across multiple cultures/languages/continents. Though the parents used different syntaxes, the kids all arrived at the same core syntax. They didn't get it from their parents or immediate culture. It came from someone else, and one good assumption is that a small portion of gestural language (as we can clearly hear for vocal language) is innate.

SPEECH:

[eccenthink]

So easy a H. heidelbergensis could do it.

Language before thinking?

[hcetSJ]

language ability may have developed earlier than we thought.

My first thought was, how could we speak before we could think? But that was before I read the comments . . .

Re:Language before thinking?

[grikdog]

Just out of curiosity, what necessarily connects speaking to thinking? Is "thought" defined as chattering inside your head as though you talk quietly and someone else quietly listens, like the constant drip-drip of a faucet or the incessant hydrodynamic neap of a leaky toilet? In my personal experience, somewhat limited I'll admit, but not personally insignificant since I raised a family on it, creativity suddenly appears out of a black, thoughtless void -- whether that translates into poetry, videogames or Zen. You prepare and perspire and sacrifice yourself to an agony of doubt. Then the brilliance arrives unbidden and unconscious, as though the quiet 90% of your brain has been laboring like the proverbial million monkeys in the dark.

Well they say chatty...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

but after you exhaust the topics of the big lights in the sky, the advantages of Mammoth meat and Fire 101, you mostly just sit around banging rocks together.

Then it all came crashing down

[CorporateSuit]

What takes nature 530,000 years to perfect in humans...

C4n now r t04lly g3t pwn3d 1n 30- yrs bi teh Interbuttz!!!1!11one1elevn

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Ethanol-fueled]

we're already playing god. What could possibly go wrong?

Hasn't Evolved Much

[wunchaliketano]

Cavewoman: Hey Honey, after you carve the T-rex, will you stop by the blah blah and blah blah.
Caveman: Ugh.

Re:Hasn't Evolved Much

[Oktober Sunset]

Father I have sinned, I have depicted dinosaurs and hominids in the same post.

Re:Kart before the horse ...

[shawb]

Basing the time-frame of language's emergence based on a correlation between hearing sensitivity and vocal range is missing a very key point. Hominids most likely had oral communication before language. Oral communication is fairly common among terrestrial animals. Oral language is a subset of oral communication, but we had been communicating with grunts and yells for a long time before we had words as we know them. The key to defining the emergence of language as I believe the researchers are intending to define it lies in the mental ability to use language, the largest defining feature of language being syntax. Basically, the capacity to make oral sounds and the capacity to hear those sounds existed and co-evolved for a long time before the appearance of language. The development of oral language would provide additional selective pressure for the centralization between vocal and hearing ranges as it makes oral communication much more effective, but postulating that the physiological ability to hear the sounds another is making proves that language exists really puts the cart before the horse.

Re:More than one conclusion. or not

[fortyaybendixen]

Just my feeling while I read the article, so can an expert please help; Why isn't that ear pitching for the purpose of living in the environment rather than speech, so that speech could freely have come then or much later. Check the chimpanzees; how is their ear pitching. If like ours, then surely the timing of language theory has had no change by this find.

Re:Kart before the horse ...

[XaXXon]

In sort of the same vein of misunderstanding how evolution works, the body doesn't "invest" in anything. It makes random changes that either work or don't. This would be better worded as saying "bodies that require the expensive neurological systems would be less likely to survive unless they served a purpose" would be closer to how things really work. Saying that the body is going out of its way to go towards a certain trait is insulting to how absolutely simplistic evolution is. "Try everything and keep what works"

Even more conclusions than that.

[Tatarize]

Perhaps our ears hear well at the frequency of the noises made by humans. I daresay that chimps hear chimp sounds and dogs hear dog sounds quite aptly. If our speech arose out of our ability to make verbal noises, then this result would make perfect sense even without suggesting a damn thing about complex human language.

2-4kHz is important for many other things

[dontmakemethink]

As a sound engineer, I can assure you a 2-4kHz sensitivity is critical for many important things unrelated to speech. Specifically it is a critical frequency range for defense from predators. For example, it's common in horror movies to use a twig-snapping sound in that range to build suspense.

When mixing music, that range is of specific importance for drawing attention to foreground instruments and de-emphasizing background instruments. Should we then conclude that these proto-humans could jam?

I would also think that the 6-12kHz sibilance range is of paramount importance to speech. Just ask my half-deaf mother.

Re:2-4kHz is important for many other things

[toddhisattva]

Should we then conclude that these proto-humans could jam?

A jam session is the bee dance of humanity.

Re:2-4kHz is important for many other things

[dontmakemethink]

A jam session is the bee dance of humanity.

Cute. I know what you mean. But bee dances don't involve interactivity.

Wanna really bug out on the subject matter? Check out the Discover Channel series Mammals vs. Dinosaurs the era where mammals are believed to have developed advanced hearing systems to hunt at night in order to survive.

Also check out this article which describes the properties of the inner ear as an argument against Darwinism!

Note the contradiction of the two examples ;)

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Derek Loev]

No, it doesn't say that. People misinterpreting the Bible say that.

Re:It is a possibility that it goes back further

[grikdog]

Elegant, beautiful systems in nature tend to have evolved over very long time scales. For example, feathered flight, elaborate bird song and courtship behaviors, indispensible symbiotic pollination regimes between honebees and radically disparate families of the angiosperms, whale echolocation, or possibly the weirdest tetrapods of them all, snakes.

Considering the social importance of vocalization in both Old World and New World primates, it would come as no surprise to learn that our prehuman ancestors used their talented larynges to warn, woo and war, creating the impression (and indeed the reality) of synergistic social cohesion which could easily take on rivals, herd prey or coordinate defense against predators. It's not hard to predict that a fire-using promethean like Homo erectus may well have been far more than a simple Hollywood grunting dunce. Finding the evidence to demonstrate it is another matter.

Re:Bass Ackwards ---NOTE the s and the t

[fortyaybendixen]

Don't forget the S and the T and similar sounds; they are much higher up in the frequencies than the sounds made by the vocal cords, that's why the claim reaches up to 4K or 40000Hz.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[rwillard]

An unreadable wall of text in a discussion about language just seems so very, very apt.

In the Beginning....

[maz2331]

There was Silicon, and Electrons, and all was good. Then came along Programs, which put into bondage all Silicon and every Electron, and made them one and all bend to the will of the Programmer.

And then there came Assembler, letting the Programmer's will be done. And it was good.

Then came C. And all was better.

Then came Pascal, and BASIC, and the Silicon became stressed, and the Electrons became depressed, and it looked for a while as if the entire Circuit would become Shorted.

And then, the Electrons and the Silicon, threw off the yoke of the mythical Moore, disobeyed his Laws, and created the Internet.

And from such beast sprang languages such that expressive power of REGEX was spread upon the Wires, and all the old Mainframes quivered in fear if its power. PERL and PHP, and HTML ruled the land for a millenium of Months.

Until they too were challenged by the power of the SUN's JAVA, and the evil empire of Visual BASIC, and of Delphi, and all other languages which had sold their souls and hearts to Expression over Electrons and Silicon.

Oh, WTF??? We're discussing the evolution of HUMAN LANGUAGE???

Never Mind.

I thought we were talking about code here.

After all, Nerds don't care about history, and Geeks consider it to have started with the release of the Z80.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Hurricane78]

I did not find it unreadable.
Then again i am no RETARD...

Now i know why nobody RTFA. They CAN'T.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[BizzyM]

Dude, your sarcasm detector? It's broken.

Don't YOU know...

[iwein]

...that 1 + 1 = 3 for large values of 1?

Don't you know [yadayada] I know that 1+1=2, and many other facts that I can prove

You may have something there.

[supernova_hq]

Have you visited any forums lately?
I think we've reached a kind of evolutionary slingshot status where our language has evolved so quickly, we've over extended and fired back to square one...
Now if only we can hit another one and start going forward again.

Re:Code "Monkeys"

[nawcom]

Darwinism is hardly a focus on abiogenesis. He made a little statement or two, hardly anything that he wanted to carry on his back. Sounds like you're a classic creationist, looking for an excuse to make your dumb illogical assumptions that some male entity created life. Why not female? It sounds more realistic. Oh yeah, the pagan satanists worship goddesses. forgot about that. *rolls eyes* Please read up via accredited science journals on what is currently available as evidence. Evolution has been tested in labs, and macroevolution (always wrongly defined by creationists) has enough evidence that questioning it's realism will make you looked upon as a cookoo head wackjob. Remember all you creationists, evolution is not the origin of life. Get it straight. (I think the last thing I heard from some creationist is that evolution requires faith since the big bang never happened. where the fuck is the connection between the two? Some people are stupid. After all, they are taught what to fear of if they eat from the tree of knowledge.

Re:More than one conclusion. or not

[Woldry]

Ah, but for speaking social animals, speech IS "the environment" -- or at least a major constituent thereof.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Whiteox]

In my Children's Bible, Eve is white with red hair.
She's also eating a piece of fruit.

My Wife

[Smivs]

I can quite believe that my wife has been talking for 530,000 years, and is showing no sign of stopping yet!

Re:Kart before the horse ...

[Woldry]

See this post above for an excellent response.

Difference between speaking and language.

[jd]

Generally, there are two distinct characteristics involved - structure (syntax, grammar, etc) and bandwidth (the scope of the information that can be delivered, and how long it takes to deliver it). A dog can communicate, but the structure is minimal and the bandwidth is - frankly - pathetic. However, it's quite sufficient for the purposes of hunters trying to coordinate a large pack for a successful foray. Humans have very complex speech patterns requiring elaborate structure and extremely high bandwidth, but it delivers rather more than the next meal. Technology, art and abstract thought would be impossible without such complexities, which is why it is so key to understanding human development. (It is also key in understanding non-human development in all animals that exhibit complex language and/or complex behaviour, since the better our understanding of how these connect, the better our understanding of what is taking place in societies we cannot readily communicate with and the better able we will be to guague what is real and what is mere anthromorphising.)

Re:Difference between speaking and language.

[zappepcs]

I love this:

Generally, there are two distinct characteristics involved - structure (syntax, grammar, etc) and bandwidth (the scope of the information that can be delivered, and how long it takes to deliver it). A dog can communicate, but the structure is minimal and the bandwidth is - frankly - pathetic. However, it's quite sufficient for the purposes of hunters trying to coordinate a large pack for a successful foray. Humans have very complex speech patterns requiring elaborate structure and extremely high bandwidth, but it delivers rather more than the next meal.

Now staying completely in context, is it the desire to express more than 'get off the grass in front of my cave' the driving factor for evolution? The need to communicate more and more?

Relating this to modern day: I think that society preserves a lot of people who do nothing more than communicate whereas if our most important tool was fire or a spear they would long ago be dead. While that was somewhat humorous, it indicates that evolution may not yet be done with the modern human. It also inversely indicates that the ability to communicate (paint, sing, dance) was highly valued in earliest times, thus driving the evolution in that direction.

Definition of a language

[kklein]

From Delahunty and Garvey, 1994:

A language is a set of rules, unconsciously present in the mind, that enables human beings to communicate meanings by producing audible or visible symbols that are related systematically to those meanings.

That's what a language is. Or, at least, what the guys who taught me linguistics claim it to be. And I agree. Some people in those classes didn't.

But I do.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

In my Children's Bible, Eve is white with red hair.
She's also eating a piece of fruit.

And although this really shouldn't need saying, I'd just like to point out that the (Children's) Bible is the infallible word of God. Which makes Fortyaybendixen a blasphemer.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Myrddin Wyllt]

we're already playing god.

well, somebody's got to do it.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Myrddin Wyllt]

No, it doesn't say that. People misinterpreting the Bible say that.

People like, oh, Kepler and Newton? They both put the age of the world at about 6,000 years based on biblical evidence. Did they 'misinterpret', or are you going to change all biblical interpretations on the basis of improved scientific evidence? In which case, what is the point of holding the bible up as 'unalterable truth'?

Unless of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless our voices evolved to exploit the acoustic range at which our ears already had sensitivity.

You can argue that the new find backs that up because both humans and neanderthals had sensitivity in the same range - but the neanderthals are thought to NOT have developed sophisticated speech.

Re:Code "Monkeys"

[dargaud]

The odds against the irreducible complexity of a cell with all the DNA, membranes, self-replicating instructions encoded and autonomous self-protection mechanisms springing spontaneously into existence, are the same as rolling sixes in dice, 60,000 times in a row.

Yes. That's why it didn't 'spring' into existence. And why the very first life forms were not complex and hardly qualify as 'life'.

Mutations have repeatedly proven only to corrupt DNA and cellular function, introducing errors and genetic dead-ends

Yes. And that's why natural selection comes into play to weed out the unadapted ones, leaving only those that are either beneficial (very rare) or neutral (common, but may have cumulative effects in the long run, leading to massive phenotype changes).

You don't have to believe in God to grasp that Darwinism as a theory of origins has been thoroughly discredited

And I don't have to believe in much in order to see that you are an idiot only spewing forth a few big words heard on the news, with no idea how the big pieces of the puzzle connect together. Evolution is a lot more than just 'we came from monkeys'.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Devout_IPUite]

Ginger kids eat in the hallway! I'm pretty sure the garden didn't have hallways though, so that's the real reason God kicked her out. He was pissed that she wasn't eating in the hallway.

I am sure

[linhares]

they somehow used Erlang.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Saint Stephen]

It is curious to me that anti-religious zingers, not philosophically very complex ones, roll off the average person's tongue and as thoughtlessly as 'Zounds or different quotes from the bible used to be back in the old days. There only seems to be a difference between little thinkers and deep ones. Humans like simplicity and agreement amongst themselves -- about what doesn't matter.

Someone didn't do their research

[Anonymous Coward]

Neanderthals aren't human ancestors - we are as much related to them as chimpanzees. Like chimps, we share a common ancestor, but the Neanderthal is an extinct species, not a half-evolved human (like how the Wholly Mammoth is an extinct species, not a half-evolved elephant). There is much evidence to support this claim but anyone who knows evolution could easily point out why this is so: Neanderthals are larger than most humans and as time goes on a species evolves bigger and bigger unless threatened with extinction. Our ancestors, during the time of the Neanderthal, were like 4' tall.

I bring this up because it renders this entire study moot. It didn't have much of a point to begin with, it was all conjecture, but by assuming that man is a descendant of Neanderthals the whole study becomes nothing other than an exercise in absurdity.

Re:Someone didn't do their research

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone didn't read carefully. The article does not imply that Neanderthals were our ancestors - it only discusses H. heidelbergensis, who were likely ancestors of the Neanderthals. All this means is that if an older ancestor of the Neanderthals could speak, then it's more plausible that an older ancestor of H. sapiens could speak as well. The speech capability may go back very far, even to our common ancestor with the Neanderthals.

Also, H. rhodesiensis, which is considered to be an ancestor of modern humans, may be an offshoot of H. heidelbergensis. They are much more closely related to us than chimps! So the speech capabilities of H. heidelbergensis are directly relevant to the development of speech in H. sapiens.

Re:Someone didn't do their research

[cnettel]

An unthreatened species does not evolve consistency for greater size. Most species of Homo have been somewhere around 1.5-2.0 meters for adult males for the last million years or so. Most forms of late H. erectus were quite comparable in size to modern humans.

We are also far more related to neaderthals than chimpanzees. Neither are our ancestors, but the divergence point for neanderthals seems to be much closer in time. And, finally, the article did not assume that neanderthals are our ancestors.

Re:Someone didn't do their research

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Actually.. no. You're wrong. Neanderthals were part of the genus Homo, and some paleoanthropologists consider them a sub-species of Homo sapiens. They are much, much more closely related to us than chimpanzees, and were probably capable of interbreeding with modern (Cro-Magnon) Homo sapiens, and probably did. I invite you to read the Wikipedia article.

You're pretty much wrong on every other point, too. Our ancestors during the time of the Neanderthals were 6' plus Cro-Magnons, and species do not evolve to larger (or smaller) forms unless there is an evolutionary advantage to doing so.

Of course that's what I meant

[A nonymous Coward]

That's what evolution does. The mistake it doesn't make is propagate a bad design. Evolution's hangovers don't cause permanent changes. Heck, evolution doesn't have permanent changes.

Re:Of course that's what I meant

[CmdrGravy]

Consider the way in which a human female gives birth

No, by god, I shall be in the lounge bar enjoying a cigar and have no need to consider the mechanics of this womanly mystery. When I am first introduced to the child I require that it is clean and presentable.

Re:frosty piss?

[h2k1]

they are intelligent designers.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Hognoxious]

He's German, du insensitiefes klod!

General improvement != breeding improvement

[davide marney]

What evolution wouldn't do is favor a mistake that had an effect on reproduction.

I don't think it's safe to just assume that any improvement you can think of would automatically give one an advantage in a natural selection match-up.

Changes that work ... to reproduce

[davide marney]

And just to be even clearer on the mechanism, the body only keeps changes that help in reproduction. Darwinian evolution is like a random number generator hitched to a filter that only selects the combinations that would go in your little black book.

Darwinian evolution is not so good at explaining changes with little obvious reproductive impact. Perhaps there is some other mechanism at work in addition to natural selection.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Von Helmet]

The wiki entry for Kepler makes no mention of any Christian beliefs, and while Answersingenesis cite him as a prolific Christian scientist, they make no mention of any assertions of his surrounding the age of the universe. As for Newton, I see that he was born in 1643, so was around at the time that the 6,000 year theory was first properly published by James Ussher in 1650. As such, I'm not convinced Newton came up with that one independently.

The idea of the age of the universe etc. as claimed by Ussher is fairly sound, but based on large leaps of logic once you get beyond a certain point in the chronology. There's really very little Biblical basis for it, and frankly you'd do as well to hold up the Bible Code as an argument that the Bible is somehow scientifically errant as you would Ussher's chronology.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Von Helmet]

Ah, have now found a mention of Kepler estimating the age of the Universe, and coming out with a similar figure to Ussher. My main point still stands though, regardless of who was making the estimates.

Re:That's impossible! Got Bible?

[Myrddin Wyllt]

My point was about interpretation, not scientific accuracy. The GGGPP dismisses a 6,000 year old biblical universe as 'misinterpretation', armed as he is with current scientific evidence that it is probably a little older than that. In the 17th and 18th centuries, minds as sharp as Kepler and Newton were happy to interpret the bible as indicating an age of ~6,00 years, despite there being 'really very little Biblical basis for it'. They clearly believed such a chronology was indicated directly in the scriptures.

I am suggesting that the change in this interpretation, from 'oh yes, there it is' to 'really very little basis' is directly influenced by scientific evidence. Modern day Christians who accept a ~4 billion year old earth / ~14 billion year old universe won't see a literal chronology in the bible because it doesn't gel with the evidence. Previous generations had no such dilemma, and therefore no problem interpreting the chronology as literal.

I used Newton and Kepler as examples of rational and deductive thinkers to demonstrate that the 'misinterpretation' was non-trivial. I didn't think that mentioning that a (relatively) obscure, Catholic-hating Irish archbishop agreed with them added much to my point:-)

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[Vastad]

Unfortunately being AC, you're unlikely to ever come back and read the responses to your post and therefore unlikely to learn anything. But here goes anyway.

You are making two assumptions that show you do not understand evolution enough to competently discuss it.

Firstly I think you're confusing evolution with genesis. Evolution is not a substitute for genesis. Darwin was proposing how species A gets to become species E in response to pressure from the environment i.e. natural selection using fossils that show transitional species B,C and D as evidence. Darwin never came anywhere near proposing where the very first species A came from. That would a different theory, the theory of biogenesis if it was through biological processes or exogenesis which covers the stoic "space seeding" of plant seeds on comets theory or the kooky "we-were-genetically-designed-ape-slaves-for-Assyrian-god-beings" theory and yes just plain vanilla Genesis with capital "G" for your preferred faith story.

In short, as someone else posted, evolution and genesis (or Genesis with a capital "G" if you prefer) are not mutually exclusive. Never has been from the start. Please get that straight.

The other problem is your example. You seem locked into the erroneous idea that evolution is "random". Well the short answer is it isn't. Sure the mutations are random but the selection processes are not. If you are slow, you get eaten. If you are stupid, you get eaten. If you don't have wings, a shell or spines, you get eaten. When you get eaten before you can breed, your traits don't persist. Nothing random about that. You cannot deny that the smartest, fastest or strongest creatures live to breed and have children to pass on those qualities. That at the very least you must be able to grasp.

"OK," you say "I might agree with you so far but that doesn't account for the scrap metal in my basement before it became a single transistor."
Actually I can and again, there is nothing random about it and it started from the Big Bang. You know that the Universe has 'handedness' don't you? It has a left and right orientation that seems to go down to the level of molecules. I lack immediate references but I think this goes down to the level of atoms and electrons. Below this at the level of quarks there are 6 flavours. Directions or flavours, this isn't the important thing to grasp. What is important to grasp is that at the level of quarks, regardless of random events, take a snapshot of the Universe, every quark in that snapshot will always have 1 of 6 possible flavours. Just 6. The distribution will be random but there is nothing chaotic about - well - a Venn diagram definitively divided into 6 exclusive sets. Upon these six sets, regardless of possible random distribution (because who knows, certain flavours may favour certain handedness) electrons and atoms will either be left-handed or right-handed. Upon this, organic molecules tend to favour being left-handed. Why? Nobody really knows, its just the way things are under the microscope. Rising up through the scales, I can't help but feel that there isn't anything random about the Universe and its building blocks, but something rather inevitable. The rules are there, such as the four fundamental interactions with at least two results fixed at being left- or right-handedness. It is inevitable for something more complex to result from the interactions of something simple. For all the pieces to be in place at the right time - that may be random as its a matter of distribution over space-time - but the outcome is inevitable because it can only be one of two. It was going to happen somewhere and it happened here.

Re:More than one conclusion. or not

[fortyaybendixen]

Sure, but check the chimp. Can we actually hear 20kHz higher than them , because if no, then forget the frequency as an early reason for language.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[fortyaybendixen]

ok. Something is broken along the way from transmitter to receiver. But are you sure that your dry wit is not so dry as to be indigestible by 67%water -man. Man uses water for everything, and maybe any man's water can not dissolve your wit. Thank god or thank christ I didn't have another ginormous religious argument on my hands, because they do very often come out very much like your initial words. - the world is still flat to some of them.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[fortyaybendixen]

Well, to understand it better, you will benefit from reading it again, and meanwhile, pay attention. You are not the only person that should be listened to.

Re:re distract etc

[fortyaybendixen]

Wrong. You tell me for exampe the "Mod" point that 1+1=3, and all I have to do is to ask why or how and walk away until you tell me the answer. If you walk away then all I have wasted is that word. If you don't we may have an intelligent discussion. So Why or how regarding all that you said.

Re:re distract etc

[iwein]

It is actually a joke, and actually not mine. But here goes.

If you decide to show 0 decimals in your output, 1.4 is printed as 1, but 1.4+1.4 will be printed as 3. Writing the code is left as an exercise to the reader. I could try and come up with more examples, but basically you shouldn't take things too seriously.

http://www.oneplusoneequalsthree.com/what_is_113/index.html

Language or farting-fun?

[eelko]

I've just done a spectral analysis on fart and burb sounds - they also fit quite nicely in the 2-4KHz range.

So for all I care these Neanderthals are just a bunch of guys that enjoyed farting competitions and doing the 'WhatAnimalIsThis' belching game.

Re:Language or farting-fun?

[Cro Magnon]

So for all I care these Neanderthals are just a bunch of guys that enjoyed farting competitions and doing the 'WhatAnimalIsThis' belching game.

Things haven't really changed much since then.

Sensitivity as an indicator for language

[fugue]

What is the frequency sensitivity of the ears of other animals that evolved in the same area? They talk about other primates only, but it's reasonable to think that different primates were specialised for different tasks. Is sensitivity uniform enough, and are early humans different enough, to suggest that this is important? Since ears are generally useful before vocal folds (I'm assuming), it seems that the shape of ears would have driven the capabilities of voices more than the other way around.

Caveman

[HTH NE1]

Atouk alounda Lana. Atouk Lana zug-zug.

Re:Before Adam and Eve

[ORBAT]

First of all, A or not A == A. Second, you use faulty analogies (comparing computers and biological systems is idiotic) and to top it all off you obviously have no grasp of what evolution is. Please, PLEASE at least glance at the Wikipedia article (or better yet, use Google Scholar) and read up on the subject before speaking ex cathedra about something.

AS-positive

[wonkavader]

Not ridiculous, but beyond testability, and you'd expect (but you don't always get what you'd expect) that the mouth-stuff comes in the same package as the manual-language stuff. Losing one or the other says it's not a language center that got hit.

I'd be interesting to see AS-positive deaf children. Language and gesticulation are different. They're different parts of your brain (though perhaps VERY close). It's possible that a deaf aspie could use sign language well, but still show little manual emotive expression.

Re:re distract etc

[fortyaybendixen]

Ok. I get the maths. Re serious, thanks for the advice, and I could have taken your modpoint one as a joke, but not the one about Adam and Eve and language. There are people like that, You know. I could have considered whether such flat earth people would be on the internet, and the answer would probably be generally no, but then that is not necessarily so, so in conclusion I ask rhetorically: how many levels of logic should I consider before I make my comment, or before I decide my comment. I do take things seriously, but that is in the end how I am built, and by now, I am not worried about it any more, especially because without it, you get no facts and no development. I'm ok You're ok.