Human Language May Have Evolved To Help Our Ancestors Make Tools

sciencehabit writes: If there's one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals, it's our ability to use language. But when and why did this trait evolve? A new study concludes that the art of conversation may have arisen early in human evolution, because it made it easier for our ancestors to teach each other how to make stone tools — a skill that was crucial for the spectacular success of our lineage. The study involved getting a number of college students to try to make their own primitive stone tools, some using language, others not. The team discovered that only those that used language were able to make effective tools.

Comments

Pressure versus mechanism

[Livius]

Language provides a capacity for learning that is collective and cumulative. The usefulness of language in tool-making and vast numbers of other tasks is obvious.

First, that doesn't tell us whether tool-making preceded language or the reverse.

Second, it doesn't tell us anything about how humans acquired language. Using sounds and/or gestures as symbolic communication elements is hard enough, but that's the easy part, and it can't happen until there is a common set of thoughts to exchange. You need shared language inside the head before you can start speaking and being understood - that's the hard part that linguists puzzle over.

Wrong Headed

[Anonymous Coward]

I encourage you to read more about language. It is NOT equivalent to communication, and despite you ostensibly detesting "thinkers in ivory towers", you simple are not going to understand something as complex as language by sitting around anthropomorphizing farm animals.