Cloned humans raised without parents. They grow to do?

In My Humble Opinion
41

No; for communication.

And humans are story-tellers. It’s what we do. It is, quite possibly, what makes us human. What would happen with a group of children raised with nobody to tell stories to them I have no idea; but I think you’d get at least rudimentary stories coming from the children themselves.

Neither, theoretically, do my cats and dog: but they communicate a great deal, all the same, among each other as well as with me. Some of the communication with me is about food or opening doors, but not all of it.

Humans, as I said in another thread, are weird about sex.

It would be fascinating to me, if it were possible to actually see this experiment, to find out whether, starting over from scratch, we wound up with patterns more like chimps, more like bonobos, or something else altogether; also whether, if provided with some sort of leather or fabric, the humans started spontaneously wearing clothes and if so in what fashion.

But I’m afraid the children, even if raised with full access to each other, would all take large amounts of damage; and if raised separately would take such damage they might not even survive.

– I can’t think of the name of the author, or of most of the story: but I once read a science fiction piece in which the humans were at war with members of another species, and the other species had animal assistants, rather like we have dogs. Turned out the assistants were the descendants of infant survivors of an earlier portion of the war, taken captive but without any adult humans or older children; they’d developed in such a fashion that their captors never realized that they were potentially sapient. Fiction, of course; but maybe not an implausible guess.

42

“Hey, remember that time the pattern on the food-opening-box changed, and Zort pulled too hard on the lever and fell on his butt? Yeah, that was hilarious.”
“Yeah, Zort was definitely no Gbin. Man, Gbin could open a food box faster than anyone else could even notice it was there.”

43

Sounds interesting, perhaps you could ask for an ID in this thread.

44

That does sound like a cool story (one that I don’t recognize sadly).

45

Probably no sense my asking in your thread, then. Though I suppose maybe somebody else might recognize it.

46

Yeah, you’ll get a better chance of it being recognized there

47

OK, I’ve posted it there.

Now back to your irregularly scheduled discussion . . .

48

To circle back to the original question… I was assuming these humans would be raised by some kind of humanoid robot (probably a very rough one, like the condor puppet, since the aliens would never have seen an adult human - unless they also had our archeaological record, but then we get into territory where they might be able to reconstruct rough elements from our culture, so let’s ignore that?) and placed into a natural environment, rather than living among the aliens.

Maybe they raise them in captivity with the aforementioned puppets, probably in a group setting, until they are old enough to survive on their own, and then they are released into the wild.

I’d imagine communication would emerge pretty quickly. Even if the condor style puppets are silent, if the kids are around each other I think they’d vocalize to each other anyways, and over time this would develop into words and sentences.

I just don’t know if they’d develop a complete language in a single generation, or if they’d be more akin to the level apes or monkeys are at for the first generation before becoming more complex with each generation. As long as these proto-languages develop faster than the language using parts of their brain evolve to become vestigial - and it’s almost certain they will do so - languages as complex as ours (though potentially quite alien?) should emerge.

49

Among those who believe that language would emerge, possibly over several generations - do you think it would be initially primarily gestural or vocalizations?

If released into a “natural setting” in which the groups had to gather or even hunt their food, how long until tool use, and complex tool use, would emerge?

50

That would depend entirely on the temperature, I’d guess. If they were in some hot tropical environment, I’m gonna guess no.

51

I think vocalizations and facial expressions (which I wouldn’t call gestural). We have the apparatus for it. Also, babies coo and babble even when by themselves, which is a big pointer to vocalization for me. AFAIK, while all babies do “manually babble”, only deaf babies will turn to that with any frequency.

Pettito and Marentette concluded that between 40% and 70% of deaf children’s manual activity can be classified as manual babbling, whereas manual babbling accounts for less than 10% of hearing children’s manual activity.

So vocalization is primary in hearing kids, ISTM.

52

Also depends on the local plant life. If there’s thorns, alien poison ivy and so on all over the place then I suspect people would re-invent clothing pretty quick.

53

I don’t know. New Guinea has plenty of dangerous plants and yet some native groups went around naked (barring decorative elements like penis gourds and necklaces).

54

Deaf babies are often delayed learning spoken language, since they aren’t exposed to much adult speech. However, if we assume the babies are all raised together, they would hear each other’s babbling. Twin languages seem to be mainly spoken, which suggests this is likely to be the outcome.

Yeah, I agree. Even in a cold environment, they’re just going to wrap the fabric around themselves like cloaks. Sewing requires first creating a needle, some kind of thread, and also having the concept of sewing, which I doubt is obvious if you’ve never seen it.

You’re not going to see the Swiss Family Robinson with them building substitutes for all the mod cons.

Animals raised in captivity often have trouble looking after themselves in the wild, and humans are far more reliant on tools and specialised knowledge for obtaining and processing food. AFAIK the use of fire for cooking, and of tools to grind up, soak and soften foods prior to eating allowed humans to dispense with the long digestive tracts and large teeth and jaws we’d need for a diet of raw, unprocessed food (yup, those diets are bad for you :wink:). If the aliens don’t feed them, these kids are ngmi.

So let’s assume they are being fed, but the aliens cut down the quantity in the hope they will supplement their diets themselves.

First they have to know what they can eat. If the aliens are smart, they will give them foods found in the natural environment, which would at least tell them which fruit and leaves are edible. If the aliens gave them edible roots with the rest of the plant still attached, they might be able to recognise the same plants growing and dig up the roots? (Though I’m not sure how many natural roots are edible without cooking and/or other processing.) They may well use a stick or rock to dig up the roots, that’s pretty obvious. If they’re given fabric, they might fold it to carry gathered fruits? What were you thinking of when you said ‘complex tools’?

As for hunting, is it even obvious meat comes from animals? We raise kids today in an environment where meat comes from a supermarket, and I think they do have to learn that it actually comes from animals. My daughter was talking about what she is made of the other day, and I told her she’s made of meat (maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that?) and she was quite confused.

And hunting is pretty difficult. Without some kind of instruction, they’d have to get lucky to catch anything. It’s not so obvious what tools you’d even need, let alone how to create them.

Then they’d have to eat the meat raw, which I guess risks parasites but is otherwise okay.

I think the aliens would need a ‘reintroduce humans to the wild’ program, except they don’t actually know what behaviours they need to model.

55

Preparing something to be used as a tool, rather than using the found object as is.

That includes putting two objects together to be used as a new and improved tool, and using a tool to creat new ones. A hand axe created by knapping and then tying objects together is a classic example.

Mostly we consider the extent and complexity of language and of tool use to both be hallmarks of humans, with some believing they co-evolved, both in terms of neural mechanisms and culturally.

56

It’s perhaps worth thinking about how often and under what circumstances you have come up with new ways to do this yourself, as a comparison.

You have the huge advantage of knowing that something like a hand axe exists, how to use it and what to use it for. Still, I very much doubt you could make one. On the other hand, we typically already have or know how to make the tools we need for daily life, so there is less pressure to invent new ones.

I think discovering/inventing complex tools would happen over generations, not one person’s life.

57

I think it’s possible the first generation would discover one complex tool. If they are given fabric and there are some lying around, they might invent a sling shot, for instance.

Knapping stone and also attaching it a handle? I doubt it.

58

Baby cooing is no different than baby reaching, but with less goal intention.

Yes hearing infants with parents talking language to them will do more vocal babbling than manual babbling. And children without that model (such as deaf children) will do more manual babbling.

Children exposed to both, even by parents who do not actually speak sign language to each other but are just exposing their child to a few “baby signs” will learn signs faster and express more at earlier stages.

59

You have some refs for that last paragraph? Not doubting, just for my own edification.

60

Here.

I have heard before that babies can learn to do sign faster than speech, it’s apparently simpler. Apparently some people teach their hearing children simple signs so they can communicate before learning to talk.

These advantages have led some researchers and clinicians to recommend that signing also be taught to typically developing children during their first 2 years of life (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1996; Garcia, 1999). This recommendation is supported by studies showing that infants exposed to sign language acquired first signs at an earlier age than typical first spoken words. Bonvillian, Orlansky, and Novack (1983) studied 11 hearing children of deaf parents and reported that children produced their first recognizable sign at a mean age of just 8.5 months, with the earliest first sign at 5.5 months. Similarly, Goodwyn and Acredolo (1993) found that, when hearing parents were trained to encourage the use of symbolic gestures (e.g., palms up for “Where is it?”), their hearing infants began to use gestures a mean of 0.69 months before their first vocal words.