Babel's Dawn

A New Account of Human Origins?

The latest issue of Science, just published, devotes several papers to a consideration of Australopithecus sediba, a species identified in southern Africa and dated to between 1.95 and 1.76 million years ago. When the species was identified in 2008 I wasn't much interested because the genus Homo was already perhaps a million years old by then, so this finding seemed to outside the human lineage. There were many bipedal apes three million years ago and even after the emergence of Homo bipedal apes persisted. The new Science issue considers the possibility that A. sediba led into Homo as we now know it.

A Lifetime of Wondering

The porch on the Acropol Hotel in Morogoro, Tanzania. A friend recently told me I used to pontificate there on the subject of language origins. I remember the pontificiating, but not the topic. (This photo of New Acropol Hotel is courtesy of TripAdvisor )

This Tuesday, the 6^th of September, marks the official publication of the Babel's Dawn book, presenting the story of the 6 million year long process that led to the appearance of true speech. I learned ninety plus percent of the material in the book by working on this blog, but the passion I bring to the issue is very old. More for my own curiosity than anything else, I thought I would celebrate the publication by figuring out the various key moments in my lifelong search.

Encephalon #90

Encephalon, the monthly anthology of blog  posts has just been published and includes te Babel's Dawn post on Chomsky's presentation in Cologne which I titled "Does Language Exist." Check out the whole anthology here.

Big Doings 1.76 Million Years Ago

Nature is reporting the discovery of Acheulean "hand axe" tools dating back to 1.76 million years ago, making them the oldest known examples of such tools. Even more exciting, they were found in the company of Oldowan flake tools, suggesting that these newfound tools are part of the transition from one technology to the other. Oldowan tools had been around for about a million years by then.

The New York Times story seems good and the Associated Press account is impressively enthusiastic.

In my book I go for round numbers and date the first word at 1.8 million years, so I'm glad to see some confirmation of creative activity from (roughly) that period.

What Makes Humans Tick?

Dancing (movement with sound) is universal in human cultures, but the form it takes is not.

There is an argument to made against the proposition that language exists, or at least exists in the sense of being something that can be studied. It says that individual languages can be studied, and abstract generalizations can be made, but those generalizations don’t have predictive power about any particular language. They cannot because each language has its own constelation of unpredictable properties.. 

The Joys of Natural History

 

I'm focused on my book right now and am letting the blog version of Babel's Dawn slide a bit, but I've made another video about the book, which you are welcome to watch.

When is a book not a book? When, like Babel's Dawn, it's a tour of a natural history museum!. Bart de Boer, the Dutch scholar on prehistoric and evolutionary phonology, describes Babel's Dawn as "quite literally a tour through the imaginary museum of language evolution."

What is Language About?

Einstein in his favorite hat. Einstein disagreed with Chomsky over how symbols work.

Sixty minutes into his Cologne lecture, Chomsky discusses the elementary unit of meaningful language. What is it? He says the standard answer is "comes from the referentialist doctrine." Tiger refers to a tiger. Chomsky surprised me by saying that this idea seems to be true for animals. A vervet monkey, for example, makes different calls in response to specific stimuli. Chomsky doesn't specify, but vervets are famous for making different calls in response to snakes, leopards, and eagles. (I don't know if referentialist doctrine really works when it comes to lion roars, wolf howls, zebra barks, etc.) But, says Chomsky, the referential doctrine does not "seem to be remotely true for the simplest elements of human language."

Babel's Dawn in Stores

Wow! Things are moving quickly. My book is officially to be published on Sept. 6, but it has begun arriving in stores and is available today.

Evidence of Early Speech

 

I've made another video presentation about my book. This one is an answer to skeptics who might react to the title by doubting that there is anything to say about speech origins. For those who prefer to read, the video transcript is below. If you are having trouble with the embedded version, you can find the YouTube video here.

Chimp Generosity

PNAS has just published a paper on Spontaneous Prosocial Chooice by Chimpanzees. It is a little off topic for this blog but the role of cooperation in the evolutiion of language is so central to this blog that I want to bring my readers' attention to anything that challengnes the thesis. Although, really it does noto challenge the position that sharing knowledge is basic to humans, rare amongst chimps.

The paper describes experiments in which the chimpanzees prefer behavior that gives themselves and a fellow chimpanzee a reward over behavior in which the actor alone receives an award. This shows a sympathy and "common decency" that has sometimes been denied. But it doesn't really address the issue of cooperation in which two or more individuals work together toward a common goal, at some risk or cost to the participants. The behavior show here carries no cost.. Still, it  is not nothing.